ISLA ESPIRITU SANTO; GOOD EATS IN PARADISE
Isla Espiritu Santo anchorage, Islas Las Perlas, Panamá, Friday, 27
November 2009

With so few boats at anchor here when we arrived, it doesn't take long to
re-establish contact. Alex, the Russian, is soon visiting us to pick up
the goodies we brought with us for him and Angelique. They have been here
for months and love it. One of his projects is to continue his home-movie
series about their round-the-world voyage. Here in Espiritu Santo, Alex
has torn out the insides of his Swedish-built yacht, Little Qwin, and
complete re-built the cabin arrangements. He cannot wait to tell us about
discovering two villages or settlements right alongside the anchorage; one
is probably 150 years old and, the other, according to the Smithsonian
Institute in Panamá City, dates back 1500 years. When we visit Little
Qwin, they pull out the pre-historic ceramic shards from the older site
and the stoneware tableware (Chinese motifs in blue with "Smith & Co" and
"Warranted" stamped on the back) old glass bottles and the like from the
newer one. We get to watch the home movies with Alex giving us rough
translations from the Russian dialogue.

The couple say that the only things that they can't really get here that
they might like to have are alcohol and meat. Alex's eyes lit up like a
child's when I told him we had brought a large bottle of Abuelo rum. He
admitted that his attempts to make his own alcoholic drinks were a
disappointment.

They eat plenty of fish. A Greek-American acquaintance in Panamá City
laughed once and said that the fishing grounds are so fertile here in the
islands that "those damned fish out there will hit on cigarettes if you
thrown one in the water!" You can often see the waters churning as one
type of fish have a feeding frenzy on another. In the season, whales and
whale sharks forage through the anchorage. They have mostly gone south
again for the southern summer, but one huge whale shark had her baby right
here.

Angelika (who comes from Archangel, north of the tip of Sweden; Alex is
Ukrainian from Yalta at the other end of the world) frequently goes on
food-fishing expeditions with Roger of Sea Fury. On our first full day
Roger asks around the anchorage if anyone needed fish and they return with
a nice little grouper and a sierra mackerel about a yard long. "This fish
is so fresh you can eat it raw right now as sushi", he says. We split the
mackerel with Angelika, I cut the long filet-mignon type filets from the
fish. Angelika briefs Kathleen on how to make fish soup.

Kathleen decides she is going to make this soup. Basically you are making
a fish bouillon using the heads and the bones of the fish. I like fish
soups and bouillabaisse and the like, but I was a little skeptical as it
was cooking. Didn't much like the smell and wondered about having two
heads staring back at me when I lifted the lid of the big pressure cooker.
But, the final taste was terrific, I have to admit. Here's the recipe:

ANGELIKA'S FISH SOUP

Collect up all the skeletal bones and heads, put them into a large pot and
add water generously. Peel and add to the pot whole (i.e., unchopped) two
large potatoes, one large onion and a large carrot. Bring to a boil and
simmer for 20 minutes.

Pass through a strainer to remove bones, etc. Clean off the meat from the
bones, cut up the vegetables and add everything back to the broth. If you
like celery, this is the time to add it to the broth and not in the first
stage as they become too mushy. Spice with two bay leaves, half a teaspoon
of salt and pepper corns.

Bring to the boil again and it's ready to eat. Ground pepper to garnish
the bowl.

Delicious hot, warm or even cold.

Pickled Fish

We paid a visit to Wolfgang and Ute aboard Lumme, a steel yacht that
Wolfgang built back in north Germany. When I was dealing with some sort of
insect-sting infection the last time we were here, Ute, who is an
experienced animal healer, looked after me and provided antibiotics, etc.
We had brought some fresh produce and eggs from Panama City for them and
were eager to visit. They are fun to be with and we can converse in
German. I wanted to get Ute's opinion about a certain type of elastomeric
paint I was thinking about using on the decks and to get her recipe for
pickling fish. We got a sample again while we were aboard.

UTE'S PICKLED FISH

Take a large jar or other covered container and fill half to two-thirds
full with white vinegar and fresh water (slightly more vinegar than
water). Add several teaspoons of sugar (I used Splenda) and a similar
amount of salt. Add lots of thinly-sliced onion (perhaps two medium onions
for half a gallon of liquid). Spice with two bay leaves, pepper corns,
mustard seed, allspice corns, coriander seeds: i.e., whatever you have
that you like. Bring the whole to a boil to improve the spiciness.

You can use fresh fish or cooked. Cut the fish into manageable pieces;
small fish can be cleaned and pickled whole. Place the fish and the liquid
in a large glass or plastic container. Un-refrigerated it will keep for
several weeks at least and almost indefinitely if you store it somewhere
cold. Tastes wonderful as a snack or appetizer, and it's terrific cold
with boiled potatoes and other root veggies.

The wet season is meant to be coming to an end. Certainly, we are getting
a big mix of tropical rain showers followed by sunshine. Last night, after
a rain had us rowing like crazy to get back to Vilisar to close the
hatches, the sky cleared and I was on deck in the night to open the
hatches and rig the wind scoop again, the stars were so intensively bright
that I almost felt you could get a burn. The Big Dipper (Ursae Majoris)
was low and vertical in the north; it was a little hazy to the south so I
couldn't see the Southern Cross. Directly overhead were our old friends
Orion's Belt (Orionis) and not far away Sirius, the brightest light in the
night sky.

There are one or two fresh-water creeks on Isla del Rey, the bigger island
on one side of this anchorage. It's a good place to do laundry and, at the
little waterfall, you can have a nice shower. The water is drinkable, but
most of the boats here collect rainwater using their awnings and whatever
Rube Goldberg garden-hose connections that they have come up with. Since
we don't want to be schlepping water jugs back and forth from the streams,
we need to give some thought to how we too can catch rainwater. We carry
about 60 gallons of water in our tanks and another twenty gallons in jugs
on deck. When we are being particularly careful with water, we wash our
dishes and pots in clean sea water before rinsing them in fresh, we bathe
by swimming in the sea or use buckets of seawater and then rinse off with
a bit of fresh water, and if you are really skimping you can even use
clean sea water to cook certain items like noodles and potatoes. Today I
am going to try re-rigging our large sun awning under the boom to catch
this afternoon's rainfall into a bucket. I can empty the buckets either
straight into the water tanks or into the jugs. Then I can look forward to
a shower at the natural health spa on Isla del Rey.