Portobelo River Trip

The scent of tropical flowers that swept over our boats in the early evenings and during the nights drove Jeannie and me nuts so we went on a wild flour hunt and found an amazing array, which some were out of reach or between spider webs not to mention the huge spiders eyeballing us, a squeal here and there we managed to collect beautiful bouquets.

We are anchored across the bay

Jannie digging for some plants

A chain of hearts

The white flowers have a wonderful scent

After all this time in Portobelo we finally remembered that there was a river to explore, Sunny and Blake on Slow Mocean joined us. We took separate dinghies and ventured up the river or rivers as there are three different rivers to follow. Since it was still fairly early in the morning we did see quite a few birds, but what we didn’t expect was instead of just mangroves the rivers snaked through jungle and fields with brma bulls. It was a very scenic ride and the further up the river we followed of course the river narrowed, at some points it was barely just wide enough for one dinghy to pass but the amazing thing was the depth still was up to 10 feet. 

The lowest in depth we found was 2.5 other than the hump Blake got stuck on and the rocks we hit in the lagoon area. In those narrow parts the river bed was way over our heads and you just know you don’t want to be here in a heavy downpour. We rounded one corner along this high riverbed and it was a bit creepy having dozens of buzzards look down on you. 

The funny thing about this trip was Sunny half laying on the dinghy tube loosing her croc in the water and while retrieving it Sid jokingly said: “Oh look there is a croc in this water”, and we all had a good laugh until about 2 minutes later when we actually did see a croc. Yes, Gaby, sorry, we really didn’t know that they are here when you were swimming around the boat LOL! 

Not sure what this is but we think it's related to the cocoa pod

Not just are crocks in these waters but now and then after a heavy rainfall snakes are washed out of the trees into the river end up being rescued by an anchor chain and so we had two neighbors with boas on deck.

A couple days later Sid and I were just going into town when we noticed this huge black wall of a cloud with an enormous foot approach. Whenever you see such a cloud you know that there is a lot of wind involved and so we decided to stay on board, which was a good thing. The wind roared and Sid noticed that Slow Mocean started dragging and went on a walkabout. Sunny and Blake at that time were in Panama City and no-one was aboard. In heavy rain and lightning bolts hitting all around us we tried to rescue Slow Mocean. Sid could not start the engines and there was no way to hip tow a catamaran so I was towing in the dinghy in reverse (line was only on the bow of dink) into deeper water. It was tough going as the wind was still blowing hard and a dinghy just does not perform so well with the engine in reverse. Camille on Bohemia came and helped and it was easier to tow the boat with two dinghies. ½ hour later another boater came to see if he could help and ended up on the bow with Sid pulling the anchor up. About one hour later Slow Mocean was secured. 

In the following days Discovery a Panamanian charter boat came in high speed through the anchorage and rocked everybody. He comes through here about every other week and has never left a wake like this, so many cruisers were upset especially the one where the wife fell down the companion way and the guy who was on the transom fixing his water pump which rolled into the water due to the wake. The captain was hailed on the radio by several boats and asked to please slow down, but no answer. He turned around in front of Portobelo with throttle slightly down but then pushed the throttle full forward and left us another nasty wake then anchored on the outside of the bay. Several of us jumped into the dinghy and went out to question the captain. We were told that the captain was not on board that he was in town checking in with the port captain. That’s funny the port captain was not in town anymore and his office closed as a cruisers had tried to call him. Anyway, we all contacted the owner of Discovery via email and the following day the port captain from Colon arrived to discus the situation and was actually shocked that nobody wanted compensation. We just wanted him to never do it again and maybe an apology. As a matter of fact the port captain asked us three times if we were going to sue, we did not want compensation. We all bought him drinks, fed him and he and his wife loved it so much they stayed for karaoke and he ended up singing “ I Did it My Way” five times to every bodies dismay LOL.

We left the following day to Puerto Lindo and picked up Binnie’s mooring which is tucked into the corner behind a reef. We had barely settled in when a dark, dark cloud was creeping over the hill and unleashed its fury. We had winds up to 35 knots and since we were bow and stern moored our sunshade acted like a sail and we had to hang onto it so that it would not get damaged. It was a fairly big system and brought a lot of rain. It was overcast for the rest of the day but that did not bother us as we had a fun afternoon again at Binnie’s for ping-pong and once more I managed to kick Reed’s butt!!!!

I received an email from my cousin Gaby. She was contacted by a reporter who wanted to write an article about her vacation with us. Everybody was fascinated that she went on such a far trip by herself and got on a boat and sailed to the Islands of Kuna Yala. The article was printed in the Newspaper of Holmestrand in Norway.