The End

I took a photo tour of the wrecks of Portobelo yesterday.

This sleepy anchorage took a heavy hit from Hurricane Otto last November.

Until Otto, Panama was considered completely safe from hurricanes.

Otto came ashore on the border of Coast Rica and Nicaragua, and it is the first hurricane to make landfall in Costa Rica since reliable records began, I believe around 1851.

It formed later in the season than any other major hurricane during the satellite era.

Given that Panama was considered to be well outside the hurricane zone, boats here would have been completely unprepared to ride out a really big blow. In Portobelo, eighteen or so yachts (I hear different numbers) ended up on the beach.

As you can see, quite a few were not salvaged.

A very informal survey of the wrecks suggests that metal boats are much more likely to still be in one piece, even if they have not been refloated. The glass boats are open to the tide, or resting on the bottom.

So, this was the end for a number of dreams, the sudden culmination of all the resources and effort that people expended to go to sea in their own boats. No sailor can look on these scenes with equanimity.

As you can see from the dinghy by the boat that is aground on an even keel, people appear to still be living on at least a couple of these boats.

The boat with the sails up, right in front of town, really caught our eye. Doveilyn, or Dorcilyn, I can't quite read the script on the hull. She appears to be a really nice little boat, and when we were first in Portobelo someone was still at work, apparently trying to refloat her.

But when we returned to Portobelo after being away for more than a month, she was abandoned with the sails up, in the same place where we had last seen her.

Finally, I think this is a really informative example of how a changing climate can catch people out. There is an incremental trend - Otto only came ashore 50 or 55 km farther south than the previous most southerly hurricane to make landfall in the Caribbean. But a very sudden, very abrupt event is embedded in that trend. If you're sitting in a crowded anchorage on the day that the definition of hurricane-safe areas changes, you get a lifetime of climate change impacts at once.

And I should close by noting that in addition to these wrecks and property damage ashore, 23 people died in Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua during the storm...

The Kuna and the Snail

Yet another moment to remember when we're back in Alaska

The San Blas are an autonomous island group, nominally a part of Panama, that are the home of the Kuna Indians.

Isla Tiadup, San Blas

The San Blas are one of the marquee destinations in the world "cruising" scene. We have met very experienced yachties who compare the place favorably to the South Pacific, we know people who have spent months and months there on their boats, over multiple seasons.

El Caracol

We arrived in the San Blas  after our rollicking sail from Cuba. And the first thing we did was to reconnect with our friends on El Caracol, a Portuguese family whom the other Galactics had gotten to know in Curaçao last year while I was away in the US for my science work.

Galactic and El Caracol in the background, and the ships' people taking the waters

My immediate impression of the San Blas themselves was a little...blah. The anchorages were packed with yachts, many of them in the charter business, carrying cargoes of backpackers from island to island. Not so tranquilo.

Jorge and the Galactic dudes, post-spearfishing mission

Los Caracoles, though, proved to be a ton of fun. (El Caracol is "the snail" in English, of course. They have a blog, with out-of-this-world photography, at entretantoabordo.com.)

Here and below - Kuna garb

The progress of global cultural homogenization, written in the dress of three generations of Kuna

So we naturally fell into hanging out with El Caracol, and didn't engage with the San Blas, or the Kuna, much at all.

We bought a few of requisite molas, the traditional appliqué that adorns pillows in many a yacht we have been aboard.

The second anchorage that we visited with El Caracol was an informal Kuna resort of sorts, with accomodation provided for the backpackers who were sunning themselves on the beach.

People took selfies, and uploaded them to Facebook.

El Caracol was off to Colon to be measured for the Canal. They had heard rumors that in either February or March, they forgot which, the number of yachts seeking to transit would make it impossible to book the canal without an agent.

(There is a pronounced negativity trap in the western Caribbbean. More about that in a future post.)

Our minds were already on the blessed Pacific, our home ocean, and at this point, as much our home as any place on shore. More so.

After only five days, we decided to leave the San Blas and go look into our own arrangements for the Canal.

The San Blas clearly has enough admirers already, and we were happy enough not to add ourselves to the list.

Role Models

Consulting with fellow-enthusiast Jorge

I have an ambition when it comes to parenting.

I strive to be an average father. I aspire to a middling outcome.

In our culture, everyone is always talking about how so and so is "such a great dad."

Well, we can't all be so great. I'm doing my best just to do OK.

It might be my unshakeable faith in the not-so-great, not-so-terrible nature of my abilities as a father, but I have long been attracted to the idea that what a growing boy needs at times is a male role model who is not his dad.

I had been thinking that might come in handy when the boys were 13 or so.

But lately Elias' enthusiasm for fishing has been outstripping my ability to fake it and keep up. I may or may not be an average sort of dad, but I am definitely sub-par when it comes to angling.  I can't wait to go gillnetting in Alaska to put in a winter supply of salmon. And I love trolling a lure for tuna on passage. But if you ask me if I'd like to spend a few hours of a perfectly good afternoon drifting around in the dinghy, trying to catch something, I'll probably remember a pressing boat job that I've been meaning to do.

On a couple occasions lately, Elias has found a work-around. He's met adult yacthies who are as mad for the piscine hunt as he is. And, one way or another, he has organized fishing expeditions with them, in their dinghies

I *think* that these fishing buddies of his are enjoying the outings as well. He always seems to come back with happy stories about all the interesting conversation that they had (read: he talked their ears off?). And, more to the point, they also come back with fish.

Anyway, whatever these friends to Galactic might think, I think these outings are a great way for Elias to go about the business of finding his way in the world, and finding his feet outside of the family domain.