Río Chagres, the last (and amazing) anchorage

From San Blas we sailed through the night to the mouth of the Chagres River, which is the Panama Canal’s main source of water. As such it can claim the unusual feat of draining to two oceans. The river is navigable from the lower dam to its mouth in the Caribbean Sea. It’s part of a national park and we were eager to explore this “magical and mystic place”.

The only difficult part of navigating the Chagres River is the entrance. There’s a dangerous reef smack in the middle, and you have to decide which way to round it. To the left there’s a narrow and winding channel, to the right a wider but shallower and more difficult to identify pass with potentially breaking waves. On top of that the two nautical charts we had didn’t exactly agree on the location of the reef, and, while everyone swears by one of those charts, there were a couple of locations in San Blas where it was the other chart the one that was correct.

While pondering our options that early morning, we saw an outbound sailboat go through the narrow channel. We assumed they knew what they were doing, because they surely dodged the reef on their way in. Since the boat’s instruments were transmitting their position we could see their route on our chartplotter, and decided to follow it in the reverse direction. Until they called us, and told us with a German accent, “if you intend to follow our path… don’t! We hit the reef hard and now have to stop and snorkel to check for damage”. We thanked them profusely and wished them good luck.

We regrouped, carefully plotted a course that best agreed with both charts, and then waited until the sun was high for, hopefully, better visibility of the sea bottom. With Kathy at the bow on the lookout for underwater obstacles (mostly for my own false sense of security, since the water turned out to be quite murky anyway) I followed our plotted route. Half way, it became obvious the other boat went straight through the reef. No wonder they hit it. Six turns later (two of them very sharp), we were safely in!

We didn’t have to go much further upriver to confirm that the place is indeed magical and mystic. And we had it all to ourselves.

We spent three days essentially anchored in the middle of the jungle, listening to the loud cries of parrots and howler monkeys, exploring the small tributaries in the dinghy, and hiking through the forest (always wary of a potential encounter with a crocodile).

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And… that would be all folks! Rio Chagres was our last anchorage for this chapter of our lives. It was a hard decision, but our beloved Ñandú is for sale in Shelter Bay Marina, close to the city of Colón. We are now in search of new adventures.