'Jemm of the Sea II' Sailing Blog

.Bocas del Toro is located on Isla Colon in the west part of Panama’s Atlantic coast. It is separated from the mainland by Bahia Almirante. By those two facts, the place is really remote and has a feel of being forgotten in both time and place.

Its main income stream comes from bananas, and the Chiquita company is visible everywhere from banana plantations to stacks of contenders with the logo waiting to be transported out. The other main forms of income are mainly from tourism but also from its many western expats. Obviously in this time of a worldwide pandemic, it makes this place much quieter, if not subdued, which is evident from the number of hotels and restaurants being either permanently, or at least temporarily, closed.

When we arrived on May 23rd, 2021, we anchored at the south end of the town on the so-called South Anchorage. Around that time, I realized my anchor chain counter was not working anymore which was due to a completely rusted sensor magnet.

From the South Anchorage, we got a nice vista of the town.

On the morning of May 24th, we radioed the Bocas Port Authority to start our check-in process which involved a visit to our boat from both customs and health officials. Once completed, they ferried us to the AMP (Autoridad Maritima De Panama) office in Bocas. There, we completed our immigration and maritime clear-in. As a side story, I have to mention that the immigration officer asked to be tipped! Luckily, Panama is not an expensive country, and $5 did the trick!

Once cleared, we raised the anchor and moved to our intended destination in Bocas – Marina Carenero. In fact, the marina is not actually in Bocas proper but across from the town on yet another island – Isla Carenero. It is a good marina with decent facilities and definitely the best price around Bocas del Toro! The only problem here is the constant wash from both wind waves and all the water taxi motor boats as the marina is wholly open and provides no protection. As for the winds, we never registered more than 20 knots and even that does not happen often. Motor boats are by far the biggest nuisance, but on the other hand, they provide vital transportation to the town of Bocas so we need to coexist! For just $1 per person, we can get to town.

There is also a Northern Anchorage that’s smack just between Marina Carenero and the town of Bocas. In this time of the Atlantic hurricane season, there’s about 20+ boats anchored there. On the land side, the marina sits in a poor shanty town type neighborhood which is still inhabited by the nicest bunch of people!

After our troublesome docking at Marina Carenero (we ran aground and needed to be pulled out from our predicament by a marina motor launch), I realized we had a number of maintenance and repair items to take care of. First of all, I noticed my new Volvo-Penta engine was belching black smoke and lots of it. It turned out that its turbo wastegate valve got stuck solid and nothing could revive it. I had to call the Panamanian V-P dealer to get it fixed under the warranty. They are still trying to get their parts and then they’ll send a technician to get it repaired.

 

 

 

I tried my best to get the wastegate valve loose to no avail! There was so much carbon deposit that it would move but not smoothly enough. Apparently, you need to push your engine (and burn more diesel than you want) to avoid this situation in the future! It sucks!

After all, I had to call a certified dealer to get it fixed

 

 

 

 

 

Luckily, the turbo blower was not damaged as this could have mangled the engine intake parts like the valves and even the engine head!

 

 

 

By the way, just today (August 19th), a mechanic for Comercial de Motores S.A. came from the town of David which is a quite a trip. It’s almost 4 hours by bus to Almirante, then 30 minutes by water taxi from there to Bocas, and then another short ride by water taxi to cross from Bocas to Isla Carenero. He swapped the turbo in no time and performed very solid work on it! Kudos to him, Comercial de Motores, and Volvo-Penta support!

 

 

 

It looks new and shiny now!

 

 

 

 

 

In this area of Panama, which is just in the middle of the tropics and covered in mangroves and rain forest, the weather is pretty stable yet quite fatiguing. This is mainly due to the high humidity which never falls below 70%. Most of the time, it’s around 80% and can go up to 90%-100% when it rains. Summer is the rainy season so we have a huge amount of rains which average 9.5 inches/240 mm per month. Summer also has steady temperatures around 86ºF/30ºC, day and night. There are many days with overcast skies and high humidity rendering hot, humid and muggy weather!

In these temperatures and high humidity, it is important to have well-functioning air conditioning on your boat. We arrived with three well-working units, one per each cabin – bow, stern and salon. Within just a few days of docking at Marina Carenero, our salon unit, which was an old undersized Amel original Frigoboat, gave up on us! So then our problem of finding a suitable replacement started.

Getting an original unit from Europe turned out to be impractical due to an almost three month delivery time. No self-contained A/C (compressor + evaporator as one unit) would fit in the limited space under a settee in the salon. Ordering a custom built split system that would meet both my required output and dimensions turned out to be really expensive. We were stuck until I discovered that a CTM company out of Florida would be releasing split systems with 16,000 – 32,000 BTU/hr capabilities by mid-July! I immediately pre-ordered a 16K 230 V unit which arrived, as promised, in mid-July. It had been almost two months of sweating and suffering under the unrelenting tropic heat and humidity. I promptly proceeded to install it in place of the removed dead Frigoboat A/C. Once installed and electrically connected, I contacted the only A/C contractor in the area, an US expat named Cullen Dean, to help me out with setting and installing the refrigerant lines.

 

He came over on July 29th, and we finally had our salon A/C system up and running!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No more hot and sweaty days! As a test, I set the thermostat to 72ºF/22ºC, and it was reached in no time! However, for every day, we keep it at a comfortable 76ºF/24ºC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Condenser located in the engine room.    Evaporator, under a bench in the salon.

Soon after our salon air condition failed, we hit another problem – this time with the Victron charger/inverter. We have a pair of those installed for redundancy. They are both only 2 years old and should still perform without any issues.

Because my boat was built in France, it’s 230V/50Hz powered. In countries with US type electrical power, we use 50 A shore power which comes with a 220V supply. And that’s usually OK but here, the 60Hz was messing us up. The boat dishwasher and laundry washer would not work without 50 H power. To remedy that, I had to run these appliances out of my inverter which supplies 230V at 50 Hz. One day, while doing laundry, I got an over-voltage monitor alarm. Upon checking, I realized this inverter was supplied 275V, way higher than the 230 V it was set up for!

 

 

Resetting the inverter would help sometimes but this issue would manifest itself more often and with more acuteness. Finally, one day, it was trying to output 325V. It was time to replace this bulky and expensive piece of equipment.

A new unit was ordered out of the US, and I promptly replaced it. No more problems with it so far.

 

 

One night, it turned out that our HVAC problems were not over yet. Our stern cabin A/C, which had so far worked great, started to go haywire two separate nights. I even contacted Cullen to find me a replacement compressor, but he directed me to check the system sea water cooling first. After some investigating, I realized that a brass check valve was the culprit. March pumps, used here for A/C condenser cooling, are not self-priming but will prime themselves no problem when installed under the water line. However, one of the previous boat owners installed check valves on each and every of those pumps to remedy some non-existing problem I gather.

 

 

Being made of brass and after being subject to sea water, this valve started to stick and was not letting enough sea water in for cooling which substantially lowered the compressor efficiency. I removed all the check valves and had no problems with sea water cooling or priming the pumps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course there were some perennial problems by EMEK Marin in Turkey. There was a leaking stainless steel manifold and fitting which had been fabricated from lower quality material instead of the typically expected 316 SS. They had to be ordered out of the US since here in Panama, local fabricators could not get the required material.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No matter how much work is needed around the boat, we still try to get the most out of our stay in Panama. We explored our surrounding area of Isla Carenero one day. There are several houses of US retired expats set among lush tropical vegetation.The area is just simply beautiful and worth exploring!

Now to our ever favorite subject – food! Panama, especially this remote province of Bocas del Toro, is not a great food scene. Even getting a good selection of groceries, especially produce, is definitely a challenge. However, we were able to locate a few places around here that have good and inventive food. Our favorite is COCO which serves to die for ceviches and its own invention called Bapé. This is their own freshly baked bun filled with a variety of fillings from chicken to meat to seafood and served with a side of fried plantain balls and a great selection of sauces.

We found some other places we enjoy to eat at Bocas as well. One is Tacos Chingones, just across from COCO, which serves great tacos, though of limited selection. Still, they taste great! And they serve great and strong margaritas!

 

Tacos Chingones

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another is Buena Vista which serves fine salads and some other all-American fare. Their strong point is a large selection of different cocktail drinks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buena Vista Cafe

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, another place we really enjoy for its modern and light fare is Cafe del Mar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cafe del Mar

 

 

 

 

It turned out that it wasn’t only our boat that was breaking down. Both my wife and I had some health issues that needed some attention which would end up as false alarms. Nonetheless, we required some medical attention. The best place to go to in Bocas del Toro is La Mar Clinic. Its resident Dr. Ben is a great doctor with a very nice bedside manner. However, there’s only a limited scope of services he can provide out of his clinic. For more involved diagnostics like an ultrasound, the closest place is Changuinola which is reachable by a 30 minute water taxi ride to Almirante and then another 45 minutes in a car taxi to Changuinola. There’s a major hospital there as well as Clinica La Plaza which provides most middle-level services at reasonable fees. So without any insurance, it is possible to get good medical attention without being charged an arm and a leg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water taxi ride from Bocas del Toro to Almirante

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our taxi driver Luis. We used his services each time while getting from Almirante to Changuinola.

 

 

 

 

 

So that’s our first report on our stay at Marina Caranero. Since we are planning to stay here until early next year 2022, we expect some new happenings and events that may be worth reporting in the future. Stay tuned!