Linton Bay, Panamá

Tree swallows that joined us for breakfast

Today (Saturday, Sept. 28), we launched the dinghy and used the larger of the two outboard motors (because it’s good to run them occasionally, and it ran perfectly!) to explore Linton Bay. We motored over to a mangrove stream (actually, a strait) connecting Linton Bay and Panamarina, a French-owned business with secure mooring balls. After we entered the shaded stream, with mangrove buttresses producing a maze of arches on either side, we cut the engine and quietly paddled through. Such mangrove tunnels must be full of animals, but aside from a few birds and a couple of butterflies, it appears devoid of fauna and sound.

Mangroves

At Panamarina, we stopped and had a nice chat with a Frenchman who lives by himself on his boat but is expecting a friend to arrive in a couple of days to enjoy Guna Yala with him and then transit the Panamá Canal. We took a different route back to Linton Bay and skirted around Isla Linton on the west and south. A sudden loud rustling of palm fronds alerted us to the presence of three large, dark monkeys sitting and swinging around in the top of a coconut palm. We can hear monkeys from time to time each day. Groups of them, somewhere in the dense vegetation on the island or in the hillsides on the mainland create a haunting, howling wail, low-pitched and loud, resonant as if the sound was eminating from a cave.

Monkeys on a coconut palm

We zipped by the dock to say farewell to Pani Jensen, but her owners were not on board. But there were interesting sea creatures right by the edge of the dock, including the easily distinguished scrawled filefish and moon jellies.

Scrawled filefish

Moon jellies

Our plan had been to go to Portobello today, but stormy weather that was heading that direction persuaded us to change our minds. The sun was shining here, so we snorkeled between our boat and the shore. The usual suspects were around, and, unfortunately, we spotted the first lionfish we have seen in Panama. This stunning predator is an invasive species in the Atlantic and destructive to the native ones. 

Peter is once again working on the generator. It is failing to stay on (again). Peter had previously determined that one problem is that it needs a sufficient load to operate optimally, and since we have not always fully loaded it in the past, it is failing. (Is it the fuel pump, the injectors, what could it be?) This evening, we planned to run the air conditioner, the washing machine and the hot water heater, thinking that would help. But, as sweat literally is streaming down the backs of my legs, I can hear the clink of tools in the engine room and can only hope that Peter can pull off another engineering feat.