Portobelo, Playa Blanca and Linton October 8-11, 2009

A Dangerous Incident

Portobelo, Playa Blanca and Linton October 8-11, 2009

We untied the lines and left the dock at Shelter Bay Marina in route for the old colonial Spanish fort town of Portobelo. This small community 11miles from Colon is reputed to have held so much gold in the storehouse at one time that the silver ingots had to be left in the streets. That led to great interest and taking of the fort by the pirates Drake and later Morgan.

Currently, the town is sleepy and quite economically depressed. It has certainly grown since we were there in 1998. From the boat we could see the colorful Colon busses that now pass through more regularly and other commercial and tourist traffic.

At Portobelo we decided to stay on the boat and actually go under it to remove the barnacle growth acquired at Shelter Bay. Water temperatures are very warm, high 80's to 90's and the growth had been significant. Navy Blue offered their hookah rig. A hookah is a compression motor with attached diving regulator so instead of bobbing up and down by snorkel, a very strenuous task on the hull of a 45 ft. boat, Dan could stay under the water on this hookah for one. I worked on the first four feet down while he scraped the propeller, shaft and underwater mechanical gear and removed the huge barnacles that drag the speed of the boat down-a huge job but made easier by the use of the breathing device. Thanks Ed and Valma!

The next morning we moved on to a lovely little cove area named Playa Blanca only 2.5 miles from Portobelo. It was a place with moderately good snorkeling along the sides and with a short swim from the boat, we could walk awhile on the beach. The anchor held well in the white sand and we felt quite safe tucked in behind the two small islands. The wind and swell were not a problem for us.

The next morning we moved on to Linton, another area Dan and I remembered from our last trip. There were many more boats than there were previously, easily fifty. Many were boats seemingly anchored and unoccupied but many were probably people, cruisers, who now live in the Linton area. We ate at the restaurant on shore and it was very good. We took a dinghy ride to check the facilities at Panamarina, and found they were absolutely full through January. They had a restaurant, too. After two days there we got our weather window and chose to move on to the San Blas, as we have quite a few days before we are due back at Shelter Bay to leave our boat and our time in the San Blas may be limited by the weather, the winter storms, when we return to Panama after our visit to MA and are waiting to move toward Columbia.

The following is a personal view of a terrible incident-my facts are the best I can recall at this writing:

While we were anchored at Linton, our good friends on the 38 ft. Island Packet, Navy Blue unfortunately were singled out for a robbery. The cruisers in the know describe what happened as an act of piracy, and it certainly has shaken up a complacent cruising community. Navy Blue was anchored in the center of the fleet, with boats surrounding all sides. Sea Star was 150 ft. from Navy Blue on the same line, both smack in the center!

The boat was boarded from the side late at night. Ed was still up at his computer and in seconds he was immobilized by one of the invaders with a machete at his neck! His frantic spouse did whatever she could to get them the hell off the boat. Unfortunately for other cruisers in the future, they extracted a large amount of money, passports and other valuables and left in a speeding Ponga. At that point Valma went into action blowing the horn and yelling that they had been robbed. Another cruiser further toward Isla Grande and in the direction the Ponga was going, gave chase in a 15HP dinghy, but to no avail.

The authorities in Isla Grande were summoned to the boat and interviewed Valma and Ed during the night. They took the basic information and left. Valma, unlike many of us cruisers, does speak Spanish but they were really not given any help in how to proceed to have the crime solved or deal with the resulting loss of crucial paperwork. On the VHF and HAM nets the discussion the next few days was how the police and others always seem unconcerned, and locals who often know the perpetrators and are fearful of reprisal aren't cooperative. The cruising community is angry feeling the police must be strongly encouraged by any means to be more involved! Rumors (apparently not true) started about a subject being handcuffed and arrested.

Meanwhile our friends, whom we had to leave behind, had to start the processes of healing, never easy in a foreign country, of replacing passports, boat papers and documents while quietly wondering , "Why was I singled out? What did I do wrong ?", and the terror of the moments of the attack will be with them forever.

Already they have had to worry again about being off the boat and at anchor for days at a time while they made the necessary trips first to Portobello authorities who sent them on to Colon authorities and all by bus or expensive taxi to "report" the incident. They had a hard time even getting a police report which they felt having would help in the replacement of documents, cards, and licenses. In the States we'd be looking at a home invasion situation with the expectation of severe penalty for the perpetrators.

Because of the seriousness of this crime followed by grapevine information and no/slow resolution, another rift in trust and relations between people who have moved fully to Panama, cruisers passing through who may need and want contact with the local populations and services and the local peoples just trying to live decent lives has occurred. The phrase the long term cruisers use is "What can you expect? This is Panama.", when one official tells you one thing and another negates it and sends you on to a third with his/her own idea-but it always costs more money.

Whatever the eventual outcome, the whole incident will be a major headache and major expense for the boaters involved.