Tag Archives: Portobela

Portobelo

The 4/4, after a difficult manual hosting of the anchor by Lars off cause, we sailed of to Panama and a picturesque anchor bay not far from Colon. The coast of Panama is beautiful with dangerous cliff islands so you have to navigate properly. At 15 hour we past the Farallones, so beautiful and scary and after that we could soon enter the Portobelo bay. We took the dingy in to Casa Vela and got a,, so much needed, cold beer that we did not have aboard because of pump problems. We got lots of information from Birgit on were to go and get cleared in to Panama and so fourth. Also Vela was a meeting place for al sailors so information gets around quickly. Clearance next day at the good English speaking harbour master and a tour by noisy bus to Colon the next day, waiting 6 hours for the cruising permit, and then Lars had a show with pumps running the cooling water to the 3 compressor to cool fridge, refrigerator and freezer for several days and several pump shift. We could run the watermaker so I could run the washing mascine. Also, nice grilled fish with home-made garlic bread on Sunday at Vela, with a lot of sailors. The little town had four Chinese owned food-market and to bakeries but the Panderia was the greatest. If you needed cash you could by dollars for 10% in the 2.end Chinese boutique by the bus station.