HAWKEYE HAPPENINGS, February, 2003

HAWKEYE HAPPENINGS February 24, 2003
ISLA PARIDA, PANAMA
Latitude 8 degrees 07’ North, 82 degrees 20’ West

The HAWKEYE crew spent Christmas Day in the Gulf of Nicoya, Costa Rica, across from the port city of Puntarenas. We rendezvoused at the resort of Playa Naranjo with 9 other boats - with 7 children in attendance. The resort has two nice swimming pools and a palapa under which we had our potluck dinner and a fun gift exchange. The wind gods granted us a calm day but as soon as night fell, the wind decided to blow from the north. This put us on a lee shore, and the anchorage rapidly became uncomfortable. Some boats opted to lift anchor and go a few miles to Isla San Lucas for better protection with the rest waiting until the next day to start moving around.

By New Year’s Eve, we were down to 5 boats and enjoyed an early New Year celebration at 10 p.m. our time. Well, it was midnight somewhere! The fellows decided to set off some of their old flares, which make great rockets and produce brilliant red flares. All types of flares were “tested” – as a “safety check”, of course. Most flares, particularly the SOLAS flares made in England, worked well, even those several years out of date.

A few days later, HAWKEYE, in the company with Dream Weaver and Chewbacca, headed to Puntarenas, Costa Rica to get the bottom painted before heading further south. After 2 weeks of trials and tribulations over bottom paint, we were back in the water. It took almost 6 weeks to accomplish all the other things we wanted to do including having a part for John’s computer shipped down from the states and trying to get Linda’s computer fixed (still broken). We suggest if you own a Dell, get rid of it and buy an IBM that can be serviced in foreign countries.

One of the good things about our stay in Puntarenas was the Costa Rica Yacht Club. This is a nice facility with a beautiful pool and very helpful staff. They have a good haul-out facility for repair work or long-term storage. Alternatively, boats can be left on a mooring under the watchful eyes of the security staff. They also offered reciprocal privileges to members of other yacht clubs, so John’s membership in Seattle Yacht Club saved us many colones. While the club is quiet during the week, many people come from San Jose to enjoy the beaches and warm waters of the Gulf on weekends. Surprisingly, the Chinese food in town was excellent and very inexpensive.

A side trip to San Jose via bus was fun. We had to pick up John’s computer and managed to visit a zoo and several museums as well as seeing the second part of “Lord of the Rings”, one of John’s favorite.

We were in Puntarenas far longer than we had expected and on February 7, Linda headed to town on the bus to provision and John took a taxi a little later, headed to the port captain to check out. It was in the morning with Mardi Gras due to start that evening. The bus Linda was on was stopped at a roadblock just before entering the downtown area and all passengers were asked to produce their identification. Because John was heading to the Port Captain to check us out, he had both of our passports. Linda was told to get off the bus and that she was “In Big Trouble” by the police. She was told to go sit under an awning and wait until a police car came to get her to take her to jail. Just as she was being ushered into the police car by 5 burly policemen, John went by in a taxi and noticed the commotion. He luckily saw Linda and her group of uniformed escorts as they were opening the door to the squad car. John produced the passport and we both got a lecture about always carrying our passports. It was not a pleasant or friendly experience. From that point on, we both went on by taxi to check out and got the groceries several hours later. It took most of the day to accomplish this but things could have been a lot worse. Linda has no interest is seeing what a Costa Rican jail looks like!

The next morning we left Puntarenas on the high tide and had a great sail down the Gulf of Nicoya to an anchorage on the south side of the Gulf. There we had a peaceful night at anchor after all the sport fishing boats had returned to port. Once again, we were able to see a beautiful sunset as the sun sank into the Pacific. The next day we sailed further southeast and anchored in a bay off Manuel Antonio National Park. The next morning we went ashore and took a guided tour through the park. We saw lots of animals with the Sloth being the most popular. The least popular was a lime green snake; pretty, at a distance. The next anchorage was Bahia Drake, named after Sir Francis, after a good sail. Drake is a beautiful bay on the Osa Peninsula, also a National Park. We took our dinghy up the river the next day as far as we could and then John got out and walked, swam, and climbed up to a waterfall. Linda stayed with the dinghy, as it was thick jungle all around. The locust were tuning up and quite noisy. We enjoyed the plant life and on the way back down, were entertained for quite a while by a family of 3 spider monkeys up in the trees. They became very active after eating and were swinging and jumping from tree to tree. It was a great little side trip.

The next part of our trip was a short sail of 13 miles out from the coast to Isla Caño. A beautiful island which again is a National Park. We hiked into the jungle after the ranger said the only snakes on the island were boa constrictors. Linda doesn’t mind them so much, as they have to get around you and squeeze to hurt you. She figures she can run and get away. Anyway, it was a nice hike to an archeological area where we viewed metates and spheres. The metates were used for grinding corn and nobody knows what the significance of the solid stone spheres is. These range in size from 2’ to 5’ diameter, and are remarkably true geometrically. We got back to the anchorage and had a wonderful snorkel in warm clear water. Saw lots of different fish, some of which were quite large. We were able to dive down to within a few feet of them and they didn’t swim away (must know they are safe in this reserve).

That evening, we had a full moon sail from Isla Caño to Golfito, arriving in the morning. We spent 5 days in Golfito where we provisioned and checked out of Costa Rica bound for Panama.

On February 22, we left Golfito at 8:30 a.m. on the ebbing tide and that evening, during a beautiful sunset, we took down the Costa Rican flag and raised the Panamanian flag. We were going way too fast as we had 20 to 30 knots of wind behind us. We therefore reduced sail to a triple-reefed main only as we didn’t want to arrive at the islands of Panama during the dark. Sunrise, at six a.m., found us picking our way through the rocks and islands to the anchorage. We anchored for a few hours till low tide before sailing around the island to the south side, where several of our cruising buddies awaited. In these waters, it is generally wise to navigate on a rising tide shortly after low water; that way, the numerous rocks, reefs and islets are clearly visible as the ocean swells break over them. It was great to get together last night on the trampoline of the catamaran CHEWBACCA. There were 19 of us from 6 different boats including 7 kids. Can’t wait to get settled here to explore the area; it is so beautiful. We were amazed that these islands are so different from Costa Rica. They are not so jungle-covered but have white sand beaches, palm trees and every so often a thatched hut where a family lives. Two little boys came out in a dugout canoe this morning wanting to take our basura (garbage). John gave them $1 US and told them that was for 2 days garbage. We plan on spending quite a bit of time in these islands before visiting Balboa, Panama City, the Perlas Islands and Darién. Linda & John de Hawkeye