We're officially welcomed to Panama

jeanneb
Jul 25
2 min read

After leaving Golfito Costa Rica, we sailed a long day to pass around Punta Burica, at which lies the Costa Rica/Panama border. We stayed that first night in Panamanian waters at a roadstead anchorage tucked in behind a large reef extending from Punta Burica. The next morning we left early and stayed at Isla Parida. This beautiful little island would have been fabulous to explore, however it appeared that all the beaches within sight had private property signs and since we weren't 'official' into Panama yet, we kept to ourselves.

The islands surrounding Boca Chica Panama

The landscape of Panama feels dramatically different than Costa Rica. It feels more approachable. Isla Parida is part of a small archipelago of little islands and rocks with nooks and crannies. These are low lying islands, with shallow waters – less than 100 feet surrounding them. We can anchor in clear bays that are completely surrounded by the lush jungle. We’ve seen several whales and many pods of dolphins over the last few days. And yes, we’ve also seen still more plastic bottles floating on the tops of all the waves.

Waiting at our check in location. All the officers joined us around the picnic table to complete our paperwork.

Our check in to Panama was delightful. Working with a recommended local agent, we sent all our paperwork digitally several days before our clearance appointment. On the day of, we anchored off the village of Boca Chica, Panama and took our dingy under the low lying power lines to the Marina & home of Carlos. Carlos’ crew welcomed us warmly and we sat on his covered veranda each with a cup of coffee in hand. In about an hour the officials began to arrive. Customs, Immigration, Port Captain, Agriculture and Health departments. They worked together, laughed and practiced their English with us. They all had many papers to sign and after about 90 minutes of answering questions and signing everything we were done. We shook each official’s hand and with a smile they welcomed us officially to Panama.

We completed the process so quickly, we were able to catch the near high tide at Boca Chica (it’s a shallow entrance) and get on our way to Isla Cavada (part of the Islas Secas archipelago where the islassecas.com resort is located). It was a short distance run of about 3 hours. As soon as we were ½ way there, we noticed that some very big dark clouds were soon going to be passing overhead. One challenge is that we have a sailboat – and there has been absolutely NO wind – except for this particular day when we passed under the frontal system and had 25 knots of wind and buckets of rain. Then it was back to ‘normal’. We could have put up our sails to catch some of the wind, but we couldn’t hardly see the bow of the boat so we wrote it off as a ‘fail’ and just being lazy.