The
winds finally began to slacken, and with them the seas. The
antibiotics were beginning to work their magic on Britt's infection.
Two other boats had arrived at Suletupu (Little Bit and
DelBe II, who we had been with in Cartagena and the Rosarios;
we'd been in radio contact with them and recommended this anchorage)
so the Kuna had new people to visit with. It was time to hit the
road.
We opted for the scenic drive rather than the freeway, taking the route inside the outer islands and barrier reefs. Unfortunately the inside passage is not continuous here, so we had to exit about four miles further north, going out through a passage not recommended for entry in bad weather. The smooth water became rough with swell as we approached the mouth between the mainland and the offshore island. Although the distance between the two points of land is wide, the actual deep-water channel is narrow, and breakers projected from both sides. We could see why this isn't recommended for entry unless conditions are perfectly calm; going downwind, all you could see would be the backs of the waves, and you wouldn't be able to tell the shallow-water breakers from wind-whipped foam until too late. Upwind we could more or less figure out where the deep water was, but going into the wind and swell was, as usual, no fun at all. The waves were choppy and disorganized, perhaps because the bottom is also choppy and disorganized. We got a little nervous as the depthsounder ranged apparently randomly between 70 and 30 feeet, but soon we were out of the mouth and onto the 80-foot-deep shelf for the few miles to Isla Piños. We tucked in for the night around the corner, out of the swell, and the next morning continued northwest. (Yup, we're going north. If you look at a map, you'll see the eastern section of Panama curving northwest like a snake; we won't get above the hump until Porvenir.)
Our route for the next few miles could barely be considered "inside", as the offshore shoals and reefs are few and far between. So it was bouncy and rough for a while. Even so, we saw Kuna sailing canoes out in the waves, their tiny gaff sails sometimes just specks against the grey-blue sea. They would completely disappear behind a wave, then reappear on its crest, up and down, hide and seek. We navigated by counting sets of breakers and deciding which we needed to go outside of and which inside of, as our charts of the area are worthless, and the chartlets in the guidebook are only useful for general guidance. As we passed behind increasingly abundant outer reefs, the water slowly became smoother. Finally we had to turn downwind, down a narrow channel between two islands fringed with breaking reefs which extended toward the center like the pincers of a crab. We surfed down the swell on the smooth tongue of water in the middle, like rafting the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon, raging whitewater on both sides.
Once
past this final gantlet, the water was silky-smooth, shimmering with
the early afternoon light. We were near the large village of
Achetupu, and the calm waters inside the reefs were a bustling
thoroughfare connecting the villagers to their farm plots and their
neighbors. Canoes were everywhere. Those going northwest, as we were,
paddled steadily against the wind; the downwind boats, using the
paddles as rudders, had their motley sails spread. No high-tech
Spectra and Kevlar cloth for the Kuna -- they use whatever is at
hand. We've seen sails which appear to have been bedsheets in their
former lives, sails pieced together from flour sacks and
brightly-colored pillowcases. Everyone waved and smiled as we
passed.
We had thought of anchoring near Achetupu, but preferred a quieter spot, so we continued to a little group of islets called Islandia. Nobody lives here, although Kuna fishermen come daily to work the reefs. One of the islands belongs to a small resort near Achetupu, and an outboard launch ferries tourists out to snorkel the reefs and lounge on the beach, but the others are public, empty and idyllic. Except for one night that a German boat came and anchored a discreet distance off, we were the only yacht.
Islandia was a perfect spot to spend a few days as Britt continued to recover. We snorkeled a little, although the reefs are mostly picked over (we speared only one small lobster in three days), the visibility only fair, and the crashing, breaking surge unpleasant. The coral formations were nice, though, sometimes towering thirty or forty feet from the bottom. It made us realize how careful we need to be, sailing these waters: one moment you could be in forty feet of water, the next moment aground on a reef. One day we dinked over to the largest of the tiny islands, to burn our trash and take a walk. We found some interesting shells and one hunk of stone that we think might be the petrified jawbone of some ancient creature, complete with petrified molars. We had gone over at low tide, when the flats between the islands showed exposed grass bottom. Four herons stood sentry in the flats, poking their beaks down every so often, looking for tidbits. These same birds showed up every day that we were there, three white and one grey bird, patrolling the tidal flat at low water and then disappearing until the next low tide.