Las Perlas islands

8 31.050 N, 79 02.329 W, Isla Gibraleon

Thursday we hired Roosevelt, the taxi driver who speaks excellent English to help us run errands and check out of Panama. We stopped at the port captain at Marina Flamenco first. Peter, our agent for the life raft, rigging and getting fuel filters into Panama, was also at the port captain's. He helped fill out our paperwork and we left paying only $12.25 plus $1.50 for our exit zarpe. Our next stop was the immigration at Marina Flamenco, yet another immigration office, got our exit stamps on our passports, had our crew list stamped as well and we were formally checked out of the country at minimal cost. Thank goodness.

Roosevelt is an interesting character for a 70 year old. He has 19 children, 10 girls, 9 boys, the oldest is 53 and the youngest is 6. I am not sure how he keeps up with this brood but he seems like a very happy person. We would recommend him to others as he knows Panama City, how to get around, avoiding traffic and how some of the bureaucracy works or does not work.

Friday morning we put the dingy on the davit and left Panama City and we were glad to go. The anchorage is dirty and the dingy dock is treacherous. a few days ago 4 dingy's were stolen. Three were recovered, all four engines are missing. One of the dingy's, belonging to an Australian family, was slashes as well so it is a total loss. Since your dingy is your 'family car' when you are at an anchorage, not having one is a severe limitation.

The trip to the Las Perlas islands was a 44 mile motor, no wind and an adverse current for most of the trip. On the bright side, it did not rain too much. We had to keep a sharp eye as there is lots of debris in the water, including branches and logs up to 6 inches in diameter and 20 feet long. Hitting one of these could ruin more than just your day. We also saw many sandals, singles, no pairs, plastic bottles, oil containers, Styrofoam, a soccer ball, etc. The most unfortunately part was watching two speed boats harass three humpback whales. In the states we would have called the coast guard to report it. It was sad but eventually they tired of their sport and left the whales. On one of the islands we saw some tents and structures. We learned later from Reg and Phoebe of SV Three Sheets, that a Turkish crew is filming a Turkish version of the Survivor show on the island and what we saw was the set. Of course, everyone stays at the hotel on the other side of the island.

We anchored last night near SV Three Sheets next is Isla Gibraleon. They came over for drinks and we had dinner together on Windarra. If the weather clears up today we will do some exploring.

Cheers.

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