Up the River to Puerto Mutis, Panama

Our journey took us next to Isla Cebaco were we spent a rainy night anchored in the very protected bay along the SE side of the island near some moored fishing boats. There was, as promised, a remote refueling boat where some of the locals get fuel without having to make the long journey up the Rio San Pedro to Puerto Mutis, but when we were told the price of the fuel, about $5.50 USD per gallon, we declined. So next morning we headed around the western side of the island towards the wide mouth Bahia Montijo, where the Rio San Pablo and Rio San Pedro join to flow towards the Pacific Ocean. Keep in mind that all along this coast of Panama the tidal range can be 15 to 18 ft and there are many shoals in estuaries such as this one where the hard rain moves sand on a seemingly daily basis.

We entered the bay on a three quarter rising tide and moved slowly following the waypoints in the Eric Bauhaus guide, which we have found to be very accurate throughout our journey thus far. Slipping past Isla Leones we saw small homes dotting the island and fishermen in dugout canoes.
Skirting our way past shoals and rock hazards we made our way along Isla Verde where an old pearl diving submarine is supposed to be wrecked, but we only saw multitudes of Pelicans perched in the trees.

The river narrowed and the current picked up as we moved further upstream towards Puerto Mutis. Eventually we found the small settlement perched along the Port side shoreline, sporting a two story building with a restaurant upstairs and a fuel dock and kitchen on the first floor, followed by several other small buildings and a boat ramp surrounded by a shallow mooring field of fishing boats. Launching our dinghy we ventured ashore and asked around for the best place to anchor the boat since the tidal change would be drastic and the channel was rather narrow for exploring with our depth finder. Upon the local advise we avoided the mooring field and anchoring area called for in the book, and instead found good depth (15 to 28 ft) and holding just downstream from the fuel dock/restaurant building.

Here we stayed for two days while making a provisioning run to Santiago, a bus adventure unto itself.  Santiago turned out to be a good sized city with a great supermarket right at the end of the bus route, so we were once again well provisioned. Since it was a weekend, we planned to stay and check in to the country on Monday, but our generator stopped working unexpectedly. The problem turned out to be the starter. We worked on it for hours and late that evening got the generator going, but were afraid to stop it for fear we would not be able to get it going again, so we took off on Sunday morning with the outgoing tide headed for Panama City, still four days away. Without the generator we would have no way to run our refrigerator or keep our batteries sufficiently charged, or to run the A/C - a definite problem on our boat where we are accustomed to sleeping in air-conditioned comfort instead of sweating it out.

Leaving with the tide.

Exiting Bahia de Montijo on our journey towards Panama City, still several days away.