After eight months of "sheltering in place" (remember that term from months ago?) we now plan to leave our Pandemic Paradise here on Bastimentos Island in Bocas del Toro, Panama.
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| Jungle Lodge 1 |
Actually we have had several plans over the last few weeks, but here's what - as of the moment of posting - we think is our "final edit":
The Plan
We have reservations on a flight from Bocas to Panama City on Thursday (October 29) and on a flight from PTY to LAX Friday (October 30). This gets us out of Panama one day before we would be considered turistas non grata by the Panamanian immigration office (or as they like to say on Fox News: illegal immigrants).
From LA we will drive to Sacramento where we plan to spend six weeks in an Airbnb rental house which looks spacious, clean and well equipped (on the listing . . .) and deal with several routine medical matters. Amazing how much one can look forward to getting one's teeth cleaned!
This is the point in prior Leaving Abracadabra Posts that we have chattered on about plans to go walking in England, Spain, Portugal or France or take Spanish lessons in Mexico. Those kind of plans seem a bit ambitious - if not downright selfish - at the moment.
All we feel comfortable saying about the future is that our long term plan still includes: returning to Panama and Abracadabra and sailing Abracadabra to a place (Colon, Panama or Golfito, Costa Rica) where she can be picked up by a cargo ship and taken to Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Stay tuned.
The Plan's Glitches
Glitch Related Background: The majority of marine insurers have decided to offer international insurance only for large, newish yachts valued at more than $125,000. Explain that to us, if you can. Our bottom line: it is very hard to insure a little, old girl like Abracadabra no matter how well she has been loved. In an attempt to maintain our hull insurance we began trying to arrange for an out-of-the-water insurance survey in August.
We scheduled surveyors acceptable to our current insurer to travel to Bocas from Panama City (a ten-hour drive for them!) and for Abracadabra to be hauled out by Bocas Yacht Services on the mainland in late September.
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| Up She Rises -- None Too Soon For A Paint Job! |
The quick haul out and bottom paint job we anticipated turned into - more. Nothing catastrophic, just more. As in it won't be finished by Thursday.
So - now what?
Glitch: In May, after moving to Jungle Lodge #1, we prepped Abracadabra for her usual in-water off-season storage. We were working on the (now clearly overly optimistic) assumption that we would be out of Panama and back before we had to have her out of the water for a survey.
[Amusing Aside: In pre-pandemic 2020 we had actually thought we would be able to get her all the way to Canada before having an insurance survey done, because insuring in Canada is less difficult than insuring in the Caribbean. Hindsight you are indeed 2020. Ugh.]
As part of the usual "decommissioning process" undertaken in May lots of things came down and off the rails and decks for storage below (jib, safety equipment, bar-b-que, various sheets (ropes for non-sailors), etc..
See where this is going yet?
Glitch: When we realized we couldn't wait to return to Panama for a survey we put everything back out and on in order to sail/motor Abracadabra the 14-miles to the boat yard on the mainland for a haul-out and survey. We also decided to unload stuff in order to give the surveyors easy access to the engine and chain plates and through hulls. Off came three plastic bins of parts and repair equipment, a huge roll of sleeping foam from the v-berth, pillows and, you know -- stuff. No problem - all that came to Jungle Lodge #1 in a couple of golf cart loads. We would put it all back inside when Abracadabra returned from the boat yard to the marina. Plus there was no need to take the dinghy over to the boat yard for the survey . . . . the surveyors were able to see the dinghy at the Red Frog dock.
See where this is going now?
Glitch: When we realized that Abracadabra would not be back from the boat yard before we left we further realized we would need to (a) take down the things we had previously taken down and then put back up for the survey (see above - jib, safety equipment, etc.) and (b) even worse, get the dinghy, two golf-cart loads of stuff and some kitchen items we had taken to Jungle Lodge #1 (pressure cooker, salad spinner, plastic storage bins) across the briny to Abracadabra. Ugh. Even for Bryce who had begun to think of "taking shit off of my boat and putting it back on" as his primary hobby - Ugh.
And then - ta dah - the cavalry arrived in the form of kind dock-mates Jim and Suzy and their beamy ketch, Octopus Garden.
We loaded Octopus Garden with the majority of our homeless stuff and Bryce, Jim and Suzy took a fully loaded Octopus Garden across to Abracadabra. Molly stayed home with what we think was food poisoning but that's another story . . .
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| Bocas Yacht Services -- A Tropical Style Office |
Whew. Since that first major moving trip we have made several others to the boat yard, each round-trip involving six panga rides (Basti to Bocas, Bocas to Almirante, Almirante to Bocas Yacht Services; then repeat) and $40. As of last Thursday Abracadabra was deemed almost ready for storage and Jungle Lodge #1 almost free of stuff we won't be taking to California. Whew.
Hopefully the work on Abracadabra and our ability to re-enter Panama will come together at the same time. Those of us watching international borders shut tight around us throughout mid-2020 are a bit shy about our ability to easily move about the planet.
This is the first time we have left Abracadabra out of the water for any significant length of time. We hope she's not mad at us when we get back.
Thoughts On Our Return To El Norte
We have not been in the U.S. for 14 months. A lot has changed during that time.
Red Froggers who have recently returned from the U.S. as well as those who have recently left and reported back describe their home country as A Very Angry Place. We do our best not to engage politically with dock mates we suspect will not share our opinions -- we keep to the weather and where to buy hardware and groceries unless someone else starts The Conversation and we feel we have found Fellow Travelers. But we think we are hearing about A Very Angry Place from across the political spectrum.
Add that to the comments from the crews of non-U.S. flagged boats and we expect to find a place that is internationally and domestically recognized as A Very Angry Place.
Can't wait.
We expect our stay on Basti will feel even more like a gift from the universe than before.
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| A Very Pleasant Place |
We will miss our Pandemic Paradise -- but hope to see many of our California friends at small, distanced gatherings once we have self-quarantined for a couple of weeks. Take care until then!
Pandemic Period Summary (just skip it if you've already heard this one):
We arrived back onboard Abracadabra in December, 2019 and spent January and February sailing and anchoring within the Bocas del Toro archipelago or docked at the Red Frog Marina on Bastimentos Island, enjoying the facilities of the related Red Frog Beach Resort.
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| Long, Long Ago . . . We Sailed About And Anchored Out |
In February, along with the rest of the world, we began to learn more and more about the spread of a new coronavirus and the disease it delivers: Covid-19.
The marina closed to new boats and movement within the archipelago by boat was curtailed. The resort closed - no pool, no restaurants, no visitors. Travel within Panama of any kind (boat, plane, road) was limited to essential services. Panama's international borders were closed and commercial flights suspended. Curfews and quarantines were imposed and altered confusingly. Food and alcohol resupply got problematic and stressful. U.S. Embassy sponsored flights to the U.S. were made available, but only to places we didn't want to go (Texas and Florida). Many fellow boaters left to their home countries.
For March and April we made the most of the oddly empty private property of the resort - we took long walks and enjoyed observing the non-human island occupants which grew curious about the lack of human activity and came out on the jungle to observe us. Molly sewed masks and Bryce did boat maintenance and started tracking Panama's Covid-19 case numbers on a calendar. We wrote blog posts and communicated with friends in North America via video calls. There was one place for take-out pizza still open. We decided to sit tight and see . . . what . . . would happen.
Along with other Red Froggers, we reached out to the local community with some food donations. Bocas is a tourist economy and without tourists - there are very few jobs.
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| Thanks For Organizing This, Christine! |
As Abracadabra began to feel smaller (the incredibly shrinking sailboat, we called her) we learned of a house on the resort property that the owners were happy to have occupied. We jumped at the chance and in May moved into Jungle Lodge 1. Paradise: space for humans and air to move about, water on demand (most days), our own private bathroom/shower room, a real refrigerator, a washer and drier, monkeys in the nearby jungle and the worlds' best deck with a view of the Caribbean - in the sun and the rain.
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| Rain In The Forecast |
There were bugs and geckos - It's The Jungle became our mantra. We used a lot of Off.
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| Some Bugs Are Totally Cool |
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| Geckos Are Too |
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| But They Are Difficult To Photograph |
Despite our jungle diversions, the outside world became more fraught with every day. Some days it affected us. Others, not.
Over dinners we shared confused/simplistic discussions about the political/social culture of the U.S. in the time of pandemic until we admitted we were repeating ourselves. We listened to the ocean or the rain. We did the dishes and settled in to watch Money Heist or the Good Place or Midnight Diner.
We had occasional guests from the marina join us on the deck for a small, socially distanced drink or lunch or at the pool for a small, socially distanced dip.
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| A Table Made For Social Distancing |
Each of us celebrated a low-key birthday. Bryce had a small group lunch on the deck. Molly's guest list was more exotic -- a troop of capuchin monkeys passed us during her birthday afternoon walk!
Things began to open up. People and boats began to move about. A regular business sprung up to address the need for people to reach the international airport in Panama City -- 10 long boating/driving hours away. After a while even the road blocks became wave throughs. We still decided to stay - we couldn't get enthused enough about leaving to take on the risk of travel.
Some small restaurants in Bocas Town began to offer take-out food. One take-out pizza source on Basti closed and another opened to take its place. Boat shuttles to town resumed and over time became more frequent. A clever entrepreneur started offering a weekly boat delivery of fresh vegetables to the marina and nearby boats at anchor.
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| Veggie Boat Comes Tuesday |
Life achieved a new normal.
In September we arranged to take Abracadabra to a local boatyard for an insurance survey and a "bottom job" (non-boat people: scraping off old paint below the water line, re-epoxying and re-painting -- one of the not-so-environmentally-friendly aspects of sailing). See above -- she is there now. Construction began on a jungle lodge unit next door. Right next door. Right. Next. Door.
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| Right. Next. Door. |
The construction project was accompanied by a leak in the water system which didn't affect our water delivery but washed out the road. Going for a walk or a swim now requires driving down the muddy hill, parking beyond the mud-slide and then walking or swimming. Sigh. Even in Paradise!
In early October the government held a District Meeting on the Red Frog Property and we were specifically not told that the President of Panamá (Laurentino Cortizo) would be there . . . even when we asked. After he left we read about his presence in the paper.
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| A Government Group Arriving At Red Frog Dock -- Can You Spot The President? We Can't. |
In September the Panamanian government announced that regular commercial flights would commence in mid-October. Those who had overstayed their 6-month tourist authorization (ours: mid-June) were told to leave by October 31, apply for long-term residence or incur a monthly fine and eventually face limitations to our ability to return to Panama.
Restaurants and guest houses are reopening. We are leaving. Abracadabra is staying. More to come.
