SO, THIS IS CRUISING!
Isla Taboga, Panamá, Sunday, June 28, 2009

Well, I guess we are over it now! In fact, we never seemed to be completely bowled over by the great event. We were of course never actually in personal danger at any time. But it did seem sometimes that we were about to lose Vilisar and all her contents and be left stranded in Panamá.

Looking back, there seems to have been a cascading series of events, one leading to the other, that led in the end to a catastrophe. I wrote that we had noticed that our brand-new tanbark jibsail and bag had gone missing. The likeliest reason was that it had fallen overboard and disappeared during a blow in Las Brisas de Amador anchorage. However, we only noticed its absence as we were stowing the dinghy on deck as the last step before leaving Panamá. We found a local diver willing to look around on the bottom under the boat in the remote chance that he could find it in the murky waters. Because we couldn’t find a powerful-enough generator, the whole effort had to be postponed for another day. The chances of finding the sail and bag were pretty low and so were our spirits. We decided in the night, however, that if the divers were un-successful on Tuesday we would just leave anyway and do our voyage to The Galapagos and The Marquesas anyway. On the sails we still had on board. All our preparations were done, we were emotionally keyed up for the challenge, the forecastle full of fresh produce, all the lockers and drawers full of canned goods and the only things left to do were to tank up fresh water and to fill the four 5-gallon jerry jugs on deck with diesel fuel. This we would do at La Playita dock and then head for Isla Contadora, a half a day to the SE, where we would anchor for one night to sort everything out.

Low tide was scheduled for 1000 on Tuesday, 23 June 2009. The divers would park their cabin cruiser next to us so they would have sufficient power. After coffee, Kathleen gets out the binoculars and makes a last careful look along the exposed beach. It has been several days now since the sail went missing (or we noticed); we having some of the year’s extreme highs and lows in June. She spots a dark formless lump along the beach that might just be our sail bag. I jump in the dinghy and row over. I try not to get my hopes up. It looks too small, after all. And how would it have travelled the three or four hundred metres to the beach when full of water and sand. Why didn’t it just sink to the bottom?

But damn! It’s our sail bag and sail, all right! I give Kathleen a thumbs-up that she can see through the binos. I heave the heavy, soggy and sand-filled bag into the dinghy and row back to Vilisar. The two of us row over to the dock to unpack the bag and wash everything out with the fresh-water hose. What a relief! We are almost giddy at our good fortune! About noon, we are back aboard Vilisar with the re-packed sail bag and are loading the dinghy onto the foredeck. We stop at the cabin cruiser to give Eduardo and Julio a tip for helping us out the day before. We are attaheah!

We are in great spirits as we motor out of the anchorage and around to La Playita to tank up. Even the price-gouging practised by those evil sonsabitches fails to dampen our joy (they charge $2.47 per 4-litre gallon for diesel plus a $10 docking fee plus 5¢ a litre for fresh water. Rip-off artists! I hope the mildew and fungus does them in! “Don’t hold back, Ronaldo! Let it all out! Give us your real feelings!”) By about 1330 we are finally on our way.

We are already well out amongst the laid-up freighters, bulk carriers and container ships that, anchored, litter the approaches to the Panamá Canal when Kathleen announces from the cabin that none of the electrical instruments (VHF radio, depth sounder, cabin lights, etc.) seem to be working. The engine alternator and the solar panels seem to be putting amps into the batteries, but nothing seems to be working. The breaker switch refuses to budge from “Off”.

Oh, well! We’ll just amend our first night from Las Perlas to Isla Taboga. There is a fast ferry the seven miles over to Panamá City if we need parts, and we know one or two people on Taboga who know about 12-volt electricity and who might be able to figure out what’s going on.

The recent work on the boat including re-caulking and repainting, as well as the welding have left us pretty much penniless for the next few weeks. So, as we come slowly into the bay at Taboga village, we try to find a reasonable depth for anchoring rather than picking up one of Chuy’s strong rental buoys. In fact, Chuy comes out in his dinghy to meet us. He tells us it is not good to anchor in the spot we have chosen but to pick up a red buoy that is regularly used by big yachts and where they frequently forget to collect a fee. By late afternoon when Alex, the Swiss guy who helped us with our new forestays, comes by in his motorboat, we are contentedly sipping drinks in the cockpit under the awning.

Alex comes aboard immediately for a coffee and a chinwag. We are happy to see him. He then takes a look at our electrical problem and determines that our inverter has been burnt out. We deduce that the divers’ compressor has stressed the whole system. Bypassing the inverter, we immediately have all our systems working again. Happiness, all round!

Alex suggests that we go with him and his Madagascan wife, Seida, to a Chinese restaurant on land. About 1730 we pay a visit to a German publisher named Hans in his cottage on the hill and then move over to the restaurant. By 2030 it is well and truly dark as we head back out to the boat. Unfortunately, the boat’s not there any more!

After a few seconds of scanning in the dark, I spot Vilisar over along the beach, heeled way over on her port side. We drive towards her. Kathleen holds her hands to her face and says repeatedly, “Oh, no! Oh, no!” Two minutes later we are struggling up the steeply-inclined deck to see how much water is in her cabin.

To our surprise, there is very little water inside. But it is obvious that Vilisar has been bounced and shaken hard as the tide went out. Fortunately, we were stowed for going to sea. But some galley items are on the floor and wet as well as some loose clothing and bedding. The cabin lights work so the batteries are still dry. Thank goodness for the new fibre-glassed battery box I built! And the starting battery is on the uphill side and therefore quite dry.

The mooring ball is still attached to the front of the boat. We deduce that the underwater shackles must have parted and that the boat drifted over to the shore somewhat before low tide and while we were in town over the last two or three hours. Vilisar is lying on her port side as if she had been deliberately careened. Unfortunately, however, she is lying in a field of sharp rocks and boulders. She must have been pounded a bit as the tide went down. For the moment, however, the water is nearly all the way out and Vilisar is lying without any feeling of buoyancy.

The afternoon shore breezes have died down and the small ocean swells that sometimes find their way into Taboga Bay seem to be dropping too. That’s a relief! If there were a surf running, Vilisar would be in terrible trouble instead of just in trouble. We check our tide tables and find that low tide will be about 2220, only an hour or two away. Since we are having extreme tides at present (about 20 feet differences between highs and lows), we reckon the water will come up fairly rapidly and that we might be able to float her off about 0200.

Alex and Seida return to their boat to have a cup of tea and wait. As the water drops even further, I take a flashlight, skid down the steep incline of the bridge, drop into the rocks that are awash, move carefully back to the stern and remove the tab from the windvane steering so it will not be damaged once we start the recovery operation. That tab is vulnerable out there on the stern and the windvane’s tubular steel construction could be bent.

Then we wait. I lie down on the damp (upside) side deck and even doze off for a moment until I feel the chill. Kathleen falls asleep inside on the damp downside settee. Talk about collected!

I warn Kathleen that, although we do not seem to have sustained any damage, we could start taking water or even be holed or damaged as we bounce around over the rocks as the tide comes up. At about 0145, I feel the boat lifting occasionally as the small swells swish up on the rocks under the boat. I call Alex on the VHF and soon he appears again, this time with a heavy plough anchor and lots of rope. He drops the anchor a hundred metres out from the beach as a kedge, and we take the other end over the winch.

In the end this kedging approach proves futile since the anchor refuses to bite and we succeed only in winching the anchor back up to the boat. I am afraid that even the small swells we are experiencing will force us higher up on the rocks and create more damage. So, Alex ties his dinghy with a 25 hp outboard on her to the bow and keeps a strain on the line as the boat begins to right herself. We hear her grinding on the rocks beneath us. She has to get at least five feet of water under the keel in order to get off. More, probably, since we are heavily loaded.

Around 0200, as the water rises but long before we actually begin to float again, water begins to rise in the cabin. We start to bail using buckets. But the water is coming in faster than we can hand up buckets and dump them down the bridge. Where is it coming from? The floorboards begin to float and the bouncing around of the boat causes other items to drop into the water with a splash. I tell Kathleen to man the 30 gph, hand-operated Whale Gusher bilge pump. Thank goodness we had a new one installed last year!

For a while, the water seems to be getting ahead of us. Then we are rocking back and forth with Vilisar’s keel on a rock and the water sloshes back and forth under the galley sink and port berth, then violently across and up under the starboard berth and under the nav table and its filled drawers. Kathleen is standing in water above her ankles and swirling with detritus from inside out cabin. I see my clothing bag, now weighing a hundredweight, slopping around. Small items fall alternatively off the nav table of the galley top. This is our only moment of fear. Not that we might be injured, but that the boat, even if pulled off the rocks, will sink because we can’t pump fast enough and can’t get a leak stopped.

At around 0200 or 0215, Alex’s dinghy pulls the bow slightly around and gets it pointed it away from the beach. We are still hung up on a big rock, however, and can’t quite yet get free. But a little while later, and without much ado, we finally float free. The other piece of good news is that the pumping is now getting ahead of the water.

We were about to start the engine when we noticed that the long wooden tiller attached to the out-hung rudder had sheared off at its base. We cannot at present steer the boat. Alex decides to tow us over to the village dock where we can give the boat an initial once-over for apparent damage. If necessary, we can wake up the Port Captain and borrow a high-capacity pump.

We spend the next half-hour there, but the waters are being pumped out, and we can see no overt damage beyond the broken tiller. We decide to tow Vilisar out and anchor her near Alex’s yacht. The night is still: no winds, and very little swell. The inside of the cabin is a soggy, wet mess. But we decide to try to get some sleep and clean up in daylight. We are worried about the water rising again. But so far nothing is happening on that front. We are still rather keyed up, of course, and go over and over the event. But Vilisar seemed to be all right and daylight will make everything look better.

We soon find that our water supply had become contaminated with seawater. We also have to pump regularly every couple of hours. On the other hand, the volume of water is diminishing. Alex and I dive on the boat with masks around 0900. WE notice wood and paint damage beneath the water line and perhaps one plank seam near the stem that looks like it might have some damage. Perhaps that’s where the water is coming from. It is clear that we need to be hauled out and we soon made arrangements by cellphone with Balboa Yacht Club to go on the marine railway, and for carpenteros Erwin and Ivan Pitti to attend to the repairs. The earliest we can get on is 04 July, however. We are all right here for the moment.

Unless we intended to be towed the seven miles to the marine ways, we needed to get the tiller repaired. Good Old Alex! He is over the next day with Frederico, a local worker. We pay Frederico $10 to dig out all the old wood from the tiller base; it turned out to be punky right through, which explains why it broke off under stress. We simply shorten the old tiller, from the diameter a bit, insert the healthy part of the tiller into the base and bolt her down again. A few hours later we are mobile again! We fire up the engine for the first time to make sure we have no problems there. A-OK! In fact, the shorter tiller is better since it doesn’t stick out into the cockpit area as far.

Later in the day we note that the water tank under the port berth has shifted, i.e., torn off its mounts and moved about an inch into the cabin. Perhaps saltwater is getting into the tank through the opened bolt holes. This will have to be checked and the whole tank re-set. Fortunately, we have four jerry jugs of good water on deck. By the end of 48 hours we are no longer pumping. I assume that there must be a slow leak in the fresh-water tank as well, and the same hole that let in sea water is also now letting the contents flow out into the bilge. Oh, well! We can always re-fibre-glass the tank or make new one.

It takes us two days to pull out all the wet clothing and other articles and put them outside to dry. Drying is not helped by the humid, squally weather. The new sponge mattresses are soaked and seems never to dry. Even once dried, the bedding feels clammy from the salt-held dampness. The contents of the nav table’s bottom drawers are soaking and a lot of gear spoiled and the wood swelled so it is almost impossible to get open. I toss a lot of stuff. Some of it should have been tossed years ago!

In general, we are fine. We have “tons of food”, as Kathleen repeatedly points out. The boat has some small damage but some of it has already been repaired. We are pretty bummed out that we are not on our way to The Galapagos. But, if we don’t lose our nerve, we can still go after we affect the repairs. In the meantime, Kathleen notifies her proofreading clients that she is available for work and spends hours at the internet café making money. Bless her!

For a long time, we cannot figure out where the seawater entered the boat. Nothing is coming from the area of the suspicious plank forward and there is hardly any pumping to do. It must have come in through the engine-room air vents that are located under the cockpit seats. I had forgotten to install them before going to sea. They are well and truly place now. We don’t need them since we no longer have a bulkhead door to the engine room; we got rid of it because we wanted more air to the engine.

Isla Taboga, Panamá, Monday, 29 June 2009

We are just hanging around Taboga until next weekend when we go up on the grid. A huge squall came up yesterday, Sunday, with the bay full of weekend boaters form Panamá City. There was a lot of dragging and resetting in 50 kt winds. I’m glad we were not on our way to The Galapagos in that. Apparently it was a very big front associated with a hurricane up in Mexico. So, you see,: Glück in Unglück!

If we had gone on the rocks in that squall, things would have been quite different. As it was, the sea was relatively calm so late at night, there was no surf running and the wind had died nearly completely away. We are thankful that Alex was around to help us and that we sustained relatively little damage. Cosmetic stuff, really, except for the water tank and the tiller. It is good to have had these problems here where they can be so easily fixed, and not out at sea.

On the negative side, all the time we were on the boat while she lay marooned on her side at night right in front of many village houses, right in front of the whole village waterfront in fact, we never saw a single local. Certainly, not a single person came the few metres to offer help. Nobody even stood around watching. We found out the next day that everybody in the village knew about it. They just passed by on the other side. Don’t count on local help if you are in Taboga!