Now I am leaving Panama!!!

We have had the boat on land for 5 days, getting her in tiptop condition for crossing the ocean. Long days of hard work; making a new water line, repairing some scratches on the keel and painting it with antifoul. Finally the reward was admiring our own images in a perfectly polished propeller!

Now we’re back in the water, preparing for the long trip:
The plan is to head for Las Perlas again (Panama’s little archipelago where we were last week) the day after tomorrow. On Las Perlas we hope to meet with some friends and relax a couple of days because we are simply exhausted after the last week’s hard work.

From Las Perlas we will head to Cocos Island! The distance is approx 500 NM (almost 1000 km), which we calculate to cover in 5 days of sailing. Cocos is an uninhabited natural reserve belonging to Costa Rica. We will be staying for some 5 days, diving and discovering the island. There are rumours of hidden treasures from the old time pirates... We will be bringing a metal detector! Well, seriously, the main attraction is the diving. Cocos Islands are famous for its schools of hundreds of hammerhead sharks! I am really keeping my fingers crossed - to see them or not? - Use your imagination!!

Underwater Life?
A few days ago I visited the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, here in Panama. I wanted to talk to Dr. Hector Guzman, who is a Costa Rican ecologist, doing research on the coral reefs in Cocos Island. He gave me lots of useful information regarding the diving in Cocos, as well as some of his articles on the coral damage and recovery after the El Nino years of 1982-83. Almost all coral died then, and until today, only 4% of the coral have recovered. However, I’m not going there mainly to see the corals...

After Cocos Island we plan to head to Galapagos. The first island is Isla Isabel, where we hope to see sea lions, penguins, turtles, and you name it! We will probably be staying for some time. We also need to stock up with fresh water and vegetables, because west of Galapagos there is only open water for the next month!

The Preparations
The other day we went shopping for food. Five hours later we had collected enough food to last for the next three months! However, I think we don’t have enough, so we are going for a second turn today! We need more of the basics: rice, pasta, flour to bake bread, jam, soy sauce, cooking oil, milk powder etc. Seriously, it is a very long journey, and out there in the middle of the ocean there is Nothing! We hope to catch a lot of fish on the way though, but still... We bought a bottle of Champagne for when we cross the equator, and loads of cans of Leche Condensada for my delicious Cafe Bonbon! In addition, the rumours have it that Polynesia is horribly expensive and that is also a reason to stock up while still in Panama.

The Difficulties
The most difficult part is the vegetables that we have hanging in fishing nets from the roof inside the boat to keep fresh for as long as possible. We are also bringing loads of canned ones, and I have even brought C-vitamin tablets so that we wont have to experience “skorbjugg”, what ever that is in English (Peter, please find out!) [OK, it's scurvy]. The next difficulty is to get used to having powder milk with the muesli for breakfast... Yet another BIG challenge is to store it all in the boat, which will require lots of imagination!
We have done the clearance with the immigration, which means that officially we have already left the country. Today we just want to get the last things crossed out from the To-Do-List, such as going to the internet, getting some more fishing gear, another diesel tank, the additional food, and some Tupper ware for mixing the powder milk... and then we will be off!!!

The next time you’ll hear from me from Galapagos (there is still no internet on Cocos as far as I know!)
Cheers to all,
Tina

Updated March 9

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