We’d been dock-bound in Shelter Bay for a couple of weeks. We needed to get out and explore this little part of Panamá while we had an opportunity. The San Blas islands were calling. All 365 of them, more or less. We thought four or five days, unless we really became enamored with the islands.
So we got the boat all sail ready in the morning. Shade covers off and folded neatly. Hatch covers removed. The air conditioner stowed away. We fired up the engine and checked the propeller – an unusual little squeak… but it went away. There had also been a grinding noise in the steering during our canal crossing, so we greased that up pretty well before leaving.
So we “cut” the lines and were off.
While rechecking for our mystery squeak, we found our dripless shaft seal to be more than dripping. Hmm. It pretty much stopped at low RPM, and we were planning to sail anyway, so after some discussion, we called it not critical. With the grinding noise and the leak, we did shorten our sail to stop in Portobello, only about 20 miles east. Only about a gallon of water had collected in the bilge by the time we anchored, but we decided San Blas will have to wait for a later excursion. Some maintenance and repairs will be waiting for us back in Shelter Bay.
Portobello is a protected little anchorage. Back in the 1500’s it was popular with the Spanish, a good harbor to load galleons full of gold, and popular with the priates trying to liberate that gold from the Spaniards. Today’s Portobello is very poor.
This was our first sail in the Caribbean. There were gale force winds a couple hundred miles to the East off of Colombia that were making the sea a little choppy – kind of like San Francisco except with warmer water. We safely anchored in the calm and well-protected bay after our crossing.
Sailing YO-D-YO 