You didn’t think I would leave that cliff-hanger of a post out there for too long, did you? So we found the island with the little submarine on it.  Isla San Telmo is a gorgeous uninhabited islet which has been taken over by pelicans, thousands of them.

Pelicans at San Telmo

Pelican nesting sanctuary

San Telmo is one of 200 islands within the Islas Las Perlas archipelago, about 40 miles from Panama City.  

Tarzan needs to lay off the carbs

frangipani flower

Most of the islands are uninhabited and a few have served as location for the reality show Survivor.  We anchored in uneven ground about a 1/4 mile offshore from the little sub. The ancient artifact is about 20 feet long and made of steel that looks like it was 2 inches thick originally.

150 year old pearl diving submarine

Its amazing to me that its still there more or less intact after nearly a century and a half of being covered and uncovered by the tides as it sits in its final resting spot up on the sandy beach. I like to imagine what it was like when the thing was originally deployed around the time when the French were just starting to dig their proposed sea-level canal (read the fascinating The Path Between the Seas), most ships still used sails to get around and Panama was a remote outpost of Colombia. How futuristic it must have seemed for this underwater contraption to set out on its pearl-hunting mission. The Las Perlas (the pearls) are so named because they were abundant in those natural jewels – so much so that someone built one of the first submarines just to exploit them. What caused the poor crew to ascend too quickly and get decompression sickness? How did it all go wrong? Who knows. All that we have to go on is the rusting steel hulk and our imagination.

Pearl diving sub

The charts of this area are terrible – generally based on surveys conducted decades, or even a century, ago and containing very little detail. Areas like these see little commercial shipping, so little official cartographic attention is devoted to them. In addition to two different sets of charts, we rely on guidebooks written by people who have independently surveyed the area and prepared their own charts for certain locations. All the charts we had for this area, when they had any detail at all, showed us in waters with a minimum depth of about 20 feet at low tide and that is about what we saw. However, when we upped anchor to leave and were slowly motoring out of the anchorage, the boat suddenly lurched to the right and we slowed to a stop with horrible crunching sounds. These are such unnatural motions and sounds for a boat that it causes instantaneous confusion and panic. It took several seconds for me to compute what had happened and get the boat into deeper water. We had hit an uncharted rock pinnacle! We were moving at about 4 knots when the water went instantaneously from 30 feet deep to about 4 feet. It was not shallow water because once we ground horribly over the thing we were back in 30 feet of water. We frantically lifted floorboards and opened hatches to inspect for water intrusion but thankfully the boat was dry. Out in these remote islands there is no assistance for miles around so we were on our own as to what to do about it.

We slowly puttered to our next anchorage to gather our wits and plan next steps. Wouldn’t you know it, but just then the skies opened and deluged us with one of Panama’s patented rainstorms. Being out in one of these you actually feel the weight of so much water coming down. The rain makes visibility so bad that you can’t see even the front of the boat, let alone land or anything else out in the water (including the many logs and trees that float out of the rivers and estuaries and must be dodged). We were left to rely on our instruments, which had just tragically let us down, to get to our anchorage. We slowed to a crawl and with frazzled nerves finally got the anchor down in a safe spot. I dove to inspect the damage. One of our daggerboards (large foil-shaped boards that we raise and lower to act as keels) and skegs (a small keel-like appendage forward of the propeller) were damaged in the  impact. And our rudder, the last thing to hit the rock as we slid by, had its bottom corner chipped open. We have saildrives for propulsion. These are like outboard motor legs that stick straight down through the bottom of the boat just in front of the rudders and have a propeller on the end. Miraculously the rock passed just under the propeller and saildrive leg. Even though they are only barely higher than the rudder, they were unscathed. The rock must have passed only an inch or so below them. If they had hit the rock, it is likely the drive would have shifted on its mounting and let water into the engine compartment. Our boat is broken into water tight segments and since it is built of foam-cored fiberglass with no lead keel, it is very difficult to sink. So this would have flooded the engine room but not sank us. Nevertheless, it was a huge tragedy narrowly averted.  Still and all, we had some damage to ponder and immediately began planning what to do.

location of rock – note the drastic change of our track

We have given the coordinates of the rock to all our friends who will go through this area.  Some are labelling it as “Neko’s Rock” – we hope the name doesn’t stick.  If you are heading this way, mark it on your chart 08 17.129N  078 50.868W

Next:  Boat repairs in remote places.

You may know by now we have made it to Panama City and are moored at the very entrance to the Panama Canal.

Balboa Yacht Club mooring field at the entrance to the Panama Canal

It’s lovely to be here in a large cosmopolitan city.

Panama City Skyline

But I will tell you it was not easy. To get here we had to traverse the third, and generally considered the tamest, of the Central American Gap Wind passages. (See our posts on Tehuantepec and Papagayo). You may recall from my earlier blatherings that these gap winds blow from the Caribbean over low stretches of the Central America isthmus and become accelerated due to land effects (narrow valleys, tall mountains, convection currents, etc.). This third and final bit blows north to south in the Golfo de Panama. Generally, these are lighter than other gap winds and are usually not a problem this time of year. However, unlike the others which are traversed at right angles to the wind, here you have to take them head on for 130 miles or so until you get into the lee of the mainland or the Las Perlas islands.

The guardian of this area is a notorious piece of land appropriately named Punta Mala. Once you leave to round this point and get into the large gulf, there is generally no safe place to duck into if the conditions are ugly. Before setting off on the 2 day trip up into the gulf, we staged overnight in a desolate bay on the western side of Punta Mala which showed no signs of any human presence other than cows inexplicably milling about on the black sand beach.

Leaving Naranjo Bay on a sparkly morning

In any event, early in the morning after one night in mystery cow bay we set out for the southernmost of the LasPerlas islands, which form a very beautiful, lightly inhabited archipelago in the Gulf of Panama. As a landing target they would shave off about 40 miles compared to a direct shot to Panama City. Well, it was an ugly trip generally. The winds never got much over 25 knots, but the currents in the Golfo de Panama are strong and alternate like clockwork. With 12-18 foot tides in this part of the world, the water rushes in and out at great speeds. Having to spend about an entire day working our way up the gulf, we were destined to face an adverse current at least twice. This was what made the trip a little challenging. When the brisk north winds opposed a north-setting current, we were faced with ugly, steep and closely-spaced seas that slowed us to a crawl and plunged the bows under water over and over again.

Roller coaster – motorsailing with just the main

Thankfully, the old ship Neko is a stoutly built boat and she shrugged off all that water without concern. We can’t say as much for her crew and after 30 hours of this treatment we were ready for a little peace and quiet. Early in the morning on the 2nd day of the trip, we pulled into a calm, picture-perfect bay on the island of Isla San Jose to drop the anchor and get some rest.

We spent two days resting and exploring the waters of this privately-owned island. Yes, its about 17 square miles and all privately owned. We saw a landing craft drop a bunch of pallets of supplies on the beach and the owners’ workers come and tote them away by tractor. The owners allow certain people to live on the island, including the man who lives in a little hut perched precariously on the edge of a cliff.  They say he walks 10 feet out his door and drops a fishing line down the cliff face to pull in dinner. [Ed: add that great pic we have.  Auth:  Sorry, it’s lost in the computer crash]   We didn’t see him but did see the little shack on the cliffs’ edge and can attest to the abundant sea life in the waters. We are quite excited to begin seeing clear water and sea life again after the murky waters of Mexico and Central America.  Afterwards, we set off for Isla San Telmo, a tiny island with a 100+ year old submarine still high and dry on shore since it washed up after its occupants ascended too swiftly, suffered decompression sickness and died inside. This was straight out of Jules Verne. Who could pass up something like that, but little did I know it would almost lead to our undoing… [to be continued]

NB: Our photos relating to this time perished in Mary’s computer crash, hence the abundance of text.  If we can resuscitate them, we’ll update this post but we are putting it up now anyway to try to get our postings caught up with where we are.