We left Bahia Carreto early in the morning, and our first stop was a check-out stop at Obaldia (Panama). This is supposed to be a barely tenable anchorage, suitable for a day stop in good weather only. But we HAD to go here to check out of Panama.
As we approached Obaldia, a black cloud was approaching us. Didn't look good, and we were kind of nervous about going in with unknown weather conditions.. However, about that time, Dave noticed a fuel leak in the engine room. So we decided to shut down the engine and let him see if he could stop it "It'll only take a few minutes," he said. So Jim Yates and I amused ourselves trying to sail our heavy CSY 44 in 5 knots of shifty wind. When the black cloud finally arrived, we did get about 15 knots for a little while, along with some rain. "Dave, how ya doin down there?" (It's a little scary being close in on a lee shore with no engine and unreliable wind. Did I mention that we had some current, too?)
An hour later, Dave had changed out the fuel injector pipe to stop the leak. But at least the black cloud had gone away. So we again headed into Obaldia. For an open roadstead on a coast that always has a pretty good swell running, it was suprisingly calm. We slowly approached the area, and anchored right off the town dock in about 20' sand.
We only expected to be there about 15 minutes while Dave checked out, so we left the mainsail up, and Jim Yates and I stayed aboard in case the weather changed.
An hour and a half later, Dave finally came back, with the old "good news and bad news" approach. WE were checked out, but Jim had to present himself and check out.
It was a complicated thing we were trying to do (and probably somewhat illegal). We wanted to take Jim to visit the Colombian town of Sapzurro, but afterwards we needed to backtrack 30 miles to the Panamanian Kuna village of Mulutupu to put Jim back on his return flight, before WE continued on to Cartagena, Colombia in the boat. When we first conceived of the plan, we had imagined this a frontier where nobody knew or cared what we were doing. This was the impression that we'd gotten from other cruisers, many of whom told us they never even bothered to check in to Panama at Obaldia.
But our impression turned out to be pretty far from reality. There was a military guard, with a rifle, on the dock. Obaldia had a Port Captain and an Immigration officer, and both of whom DID care about what we were doing and who we had on board. And Dave didn't want to lie, and we didn't want to get Jim in a situation where he'd have problems with Immigration when he went to leave Panama for the States.
So what we ended up having to do was... check completely out of Panama, check ourselves (but not the boat--no Port Captain there) into Colombia, then check Jim alone out of Colombia and back in to Panama. And get a second 'zarpe' (the clearance for the boat) from Obaldia to Cartagena via Mulutupu. This in two sleepy little towns in a remote part of Panama and Colombia, that barely had electricity.
If we'd known that anyone would really care about what we were doing, we probably would have just skipped trying to show Jim Sapzurro (Colombia) and stayed in Panama. Fortunately (amazingly) all that paperwork only cost us $7.50. And it was an adventure. And Jim didn't have any trouble going thru U.S. Customs after a 'day trip' to Colombia.
Anyway, we finally got clear of Obaldia about 2pm, and motored the 5 miles around the rugged peninsula to the Colombian town of Sapzurro. As we've moved progressively further south from the Holandes, the terrain ashore has changed from swampy lowlands with a long offshore barrier reef, to mountainous terrain, with only the occasional offshore island, and sparse reefy areas. Also we have moved from the sunshine you'd expect in the southern Caribbean, to rainforest style, cool, overcast, and rainy. For the whole time in Obaldia and Sapzurro (3 days), we barely ever saw the sun.
Many cruisers we talked to have raved about Sapzurro. This is why we'd gone to such lengths to reach there. But there isn't much information about it. It isn't in any guidebook we have (because it's in Colombia and not Panama). We only had a few notes and a couple of waypoints to go by. We slowly followed the waypoints in to the anchorage area and felt our way around the harbor. The waypoints from our friends on s/v Valentina had an anchorage spot, but Dave wanted to anchor nearer town (and in a more protected spot). But when we went over to check out where he wanted to go, the depth went from 40 feet deep to 5 feet deep in the space of a boatlength. (Later in the dinghy, we went over some 3' spots and reef!)
We finally put the anchor down close to the beach about a quarter mile from town, right where Valentina had put the anchor waypoint (CSAP3). It seemed to be a good sand bottom in about 25 feet, and we very carefully made sure the anchor was well set. (waypoints for Sapzurro are given below).
Sapzurro is a tiny town... we walked the whole town in about a half hour. Apparently it is a summer vacation spot for the Colombians from Medellin, and it's not quite summer yet. So only one restaurant seemed to be functioning, and we were the only patrons. But we had a nice dinner (red snapper, fried whole), and a couple of beers apiece, for about $10 per person. Dave the ice cream fiend insisted on ice cream too, which we got at a little shop up the street.
Coming back to the boat, I was happy to find that we had wifi. The connection was slow but held out for long enough to download all our email. I quit after awhile... it was quite rude of me to have my head in the computer with guests aboard... I planned to get up early and do more while everyone was sleeping in.
Early the next morning we had a giant thunderstorm roll through. This was pretty scary for awhile, because Sapzurro is pretty much an open roadstead, and it could get really nasty in there if the wind stayed strong from offshore for very long. It poured rain and there were thunder cracks right on top of us. We did clock 50 kts, but only briefly. We opened up our water tanks and filled the tanks in about 10 minutes. After awhile we could see the muddy water runnoff approaching us across the harbor. The nearly dried-up streams we had seen on our walk around town had turned into roaring rivers. In the worst part of the storm, the lights in the town went off. Damn, probably no internet!
After the rain stopped, we went to the town dock and took a lancha around to the neighboring town of Capurgana. (the lancha was about $3pp each way). This is a little bigger town... more restaurants, a gift shop or two, a dive shop, and an airport nearby. Nobody had mentioned Capurgana to us, but we suspect that this is part/most of the attraction of Sapzurro (Sapzurro is the anchoring spot).
We found the Immigration guy and got Jim's passport stamped in and out of Colombia. Dave and I stayed in the background so the guy didn't ask any questions about what WE were doing. He didn't hassle Jim at all, and we were out of there in about 10 minutes.
We strolled around town a little and then had lunch at La Luz de Oriente (the Light of the East)--several people we asked in town recommended this as the best restaurant. As we finished lunch, we could see a big black line squall coming across the bay from the South. So we hurried back to the docks and caught the first lancha back to Sapzurro, and got back to the boat just after the rain started again.
Later in the day, Dave, Jim, and I walked through the town and up to the Panama/Colombian border. Our guidebook said that it was an unguarded boarder and you could walk freely back and forth. However, it's not unguarded any more. There were both Colombian and Panamanian soldiers. When I started down the steps toward Panama, Dave asked one of the guys 'can we go there?' and he told us No (rather brusquely). Rats! Later another guard told us that if we came during the day, we could go. But after 5pm, it was not permitted. There has been some guerilla activity (from Colombian guerillas) occasionally in the area, and so they are taking the border much more seriously these days. When we pointed our boat out in the harbor, one of the soldiers said he'd seen us come around yesterday.
On the 3rd day, we left Sapzurro and headed back to Obaldia, where Dave and Jim went ashore for another 'just 15 minutes' to check Jim back into Panama. Well... Life is full of little complications. First, the big thunderstorm that we had experienced the day before had really pounded Obaldia. The Port Captain's office had lost half its roof, and there were many other signs of destruction. While Dave and Jim were ashore, a plane landed that turned out to be the Red Cross, coming to assess the situation and bring rice and water. The Port Captain and the Immigration guy had a disagreement about what to do about us (the boat). We had already checked out of Panama, but needed to double back for a day to drop Jim off in Mulutupu. We didn't want to check back in, because we'd planned to leave for Cartagena directly from Mulutupu. They finally compromised and issued Dave a new zarpe to Cartagena 'via Mulutupu'. That seemed to make everyone happy, and we got outta town without too much more delay.
Here are the Obaldia & Sapzurro waypoints we used:
POBAL 08-39.861 N 77-25.360 W Anchored in 20' Sand, right off town dock
POBAL2 08-40.601 N 77-25.488 W
POBAL3 08-41.082 N 77-25.280 W Off Rockpile (not on any chart)
PATIBNW 08-41.000 N 77-22.218 W Off NW point of Cabo Tiburon, in clear water 100' deep
PATIBNE 08-40.719 N 77-21.202 W Off NE tip of Cabo Tiburon in Clear Water
CSAP1 08-40.239 N 77-21.074 W
CSAP2 08-39.532 N 77-21.499 W
CSAP3 08-39.369 N 77-21.822 W Anchorage in SE corner of bay
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