Sailing the San Blas islands: anchorages, reefs and practical notes
Every screenshot on our home page was made at Coco Bandero, a group of cays in Panama’s Guna Yala. This is what we would want to know before taking a boat there.
In this piece
Every screenshot of the app on the SafeBoat home page was made at Coco Bandero, 09°30.7′N 078°37.1′W, a small group of cays inside the reef in Panama’s San Blas islands. The anchor circle, the wind streaming over the cays, the five stop route: all of it is set there. To be clear, we have not sailed there ourselves; we sail the Aegean. But people ask where those pictures are, so here is what we would want to know before taking a boat there.
San Blas sailing in short: a few hundred low islands and cays strung along Panama’s Caribbean coast east of Colón, sheltered by reefs and governed by the Guna people as their own territory, Guna Yala. Most hops between anchorages are a few miles. The water is clear, coral is everywhere, and you navigate largely by eye. You pay fees to the Guna as well as to Panama, you buy fish and vegetables from canoes, and you are a guest on someone else’s land the whole time.
Guna Yala: whose islands these are
Guna Yala is a comarca, an autonomous indigenous territory within Panama. The Guna govern it through their own General Congress and the councils of each community, and each village has its sahila, a traditional leader. Of the few hundred islands, only a few dozen are lived on, most of them close to the mainland and packed edge to edge with cane-walled, palm-thatched houses. The rest, down to the smallest cay with three palms and a hut, belong to Guna families, who use them for coconuts and fishing and sometimes a few paying visitors.
Most charts and most cruisers still say San Blas. The official name of the territory is Guna Yala, and it is the one to use ashore.
Clearing in, the cruising permit and local fees
Panama wants the crew stamped in by immigration, the boat cleared by the port captain, and a cruising permit from the Panama Maritime Authority. El Porvenir, at the western end of the islands, has long had both a port captain and an immigration office; check that they are open and working before you count on clearing in there, or clear in on the Colón side before you sail east. The rules, the documents and the fees change often enough that the only safe advice is to check them shortly before you go, on Noonsite, in the latest edition of the cruising guide and with boats that have just been through.
On top of Panama’s paperwork come the Guna’s own charges. Guna Yala levies a fee on visiting boats and their crews, and many islands and communities ask a small fee for anchoring off them, collected by whoever paddles out. Going ashore in a village usually means a visitor’s fee as well. We are not quoting amounts, because they change. Ask for a receipt each time and keep them together; you may be asked again further along.
Carry cash, in small US dollar bills. Panama uses the dollar, there are no cash machines among the outer cays, and nobody in a dugout has change for a fifty.
Reefs and charts: navigating by eye
Reefs fringe almost every island here, and isolated coral heads come up from deep water to just under the surface. The charts do not always help. Much of the survey data behind them is old, and electronic charts in these waters can be offset from reality, sometimes by enough to put a reef on the wrong side of the boat symbol. Treat every charted position near coral as approximate, and a boat symbol sitting neatly in deep water on the screen as no guarantee of anything.
So the navigation is done the old way, by looking at the water:
- Move between anchorages with the sun high and behind you, roughly from mid-morning to early afternoon. In that light coral near the surface shows brown, shallow sand shows pale green or white, and deep water is dark blue.
- Wear polarised sunglasses. They take the glare off the surface and let you see the colours under it.
- Put someone at the bow, or better a couple of metres up the mast steps, with hand signals for port, starboard and stop that work over the engine.
- Do not enter or move around a reef anchorage late in the afternoon with a low sun ahead, or under cloud that turns everything the same grey. If you are running late, stay where you are and move in the morning.
- Go slowly, and be ready to back out of a pass you do not like the look of.
The reference most cruisers carry is Eric Bauhaus’s The Panama Cruising Guide, with its own sketch charts and waypoints for the Guna Yala anchorages and the routes between them. Many crews trust its waypoints over the electronic charts here. Coverage in the outer cays is patchy, so download your maps before you leave the mainland; our piece on offline charts on a phone covers what works without signal.
San Blas anchorages most cruisers know
Hops are short, and most boats move every few days. These are the names you will hear most:
| Anchorage | Where | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Chichime | In the west, a short hop from El Porvenir | Two islands with the anchorage between them; a common first or last stop, and busy with day-trip boats from the mainland |
| East and West Lemmon Cays | In the west, near El Porvenir | A sheltered, sociable group, usually with plenty of cruising boats at anchor |
| Holandes Cays | Further east, along the outer reef | Home of the Swimming Pool anchorage, clear water over sand between the cays; the outer reef stops the swell, not the wind |
| Coco Bandero Cays | Small cays inside the reef, 09°30.7′N 078°37.1′W | Reef on every side; go in only in good light |
| Green Island | Among the central cays | A popular anchorage; read the guide’s approach notes before going in |
| Nargana and Corazón de Jesús | Two villages close to the mainland, joined by a bridge | Small shops and basic supplies; larger and more modern villages than most in Guna Yala |
All of them get busy in the dry season, and swinging room between coral heads can be tight. Anchor in sand, never on coral, and snorkel over the anchor once it is set; in water this clear it takes two minutes and tells you everything. Our guide to choosing an anchorage goes through the rest, from swinging room to what the wind will do overnight.
When to go: dry season and wet season
The San Blas lie at about 9° north, south of the main hurricane belt, which is one reason boats spend the Caribbean hurricane season in Panama. Hurricanes are rare this far south. Check what your insurer says about where you may be in which months anyway, because policies draw their own lines on the map.
| Dry season | Wet season | |
|---|---|---|
| Roughly | December to April | May to November |
| Wind | Northeast trades, fresh and steady, often 15 to 25 knots for days | Lighter and variable, with calms |
| Sea | Swell from the north and northeast; outer anchorages roll and reef passes can break | Generally calmer |
| Weather | Sunny, little rain | Squalls, heavy rain and frequent lightning |
In the dry season the comfortable anchorages are the ones tucked in behind islands, out of the swell that gets over or round the reef. In the wet season squalls can arrive with little warning, and the violent ones known locally as chocosanas tend to come off the mainland from the south or west, the direction many anchorages are open to. Lightning is frequent, and boats here do get hit. Some crews put a handheld GPS, a handheld VHF and a spare phone in the oven when a storm is overhead, as a rough Faraday cage.
Being a good guest
Most friction between cruisers and the Guna comes from visitors treating the islands as empty. They are not, even the ones that look it.
- Every coconut belongs to someone, including the ones lying on the sand. Coconuts are a cash crop here; do not pick them up.
- Ask before photographing anyone, and expect to pay for a portrait.
- Buy molas from the women who make them. A mola is a panel of layered, cut-away cloth sewn by hand, part of the traditional dress of Guna women, and a fine one takes weeks.
- Respect the closed seasons. Lobster has a closed season in the early part of the year and other shellfish are protected too; check the current dates, and do not buy them out of season, or undersized, or carrying eggs at any time.
- Fishing, and spearfishing especially, is how the Guna make a living. Visitors are generally not allowed to spearfish, so ask before you put out so much as a line.
- In the villages, cover up (no swimwear), find out whether you should present yourself to the sahila or at the congress house, and pay the visitor’s fee.
- Take your rubbish away. People will sometimes offer to take bags off you for a fee, and much of that ends up burned or on a beach. Keep it aboard, squashed flat, until you reach a port with proper disposal.
Water, food and fuel
Fresh water for a boat is hard to come by in the islands. A watermaker makes life simple; without one you will be rationing, at least in the dry season. In the wet season the rain is generous, and a catchment rigged from the bimini or the deck fills tanks fast.
Provision in Panama City or Colón before you sail east: dry goods, tins, drinks and anything you cannot do without. In the islands, vegetable boats work round the popular anchorages on a loose schedule with fruit, vegetables, eggs and a few staples, and Guna fishermen paddle out in their dugouts, ulus, with fish, crab and, in season, lobster. The villages near the mainland, Nargana and Corazón de Jesús among them, have small shops for basics.
Fuel is the one to plan hardest. It is sold in only a few places, often from drums, so arrive with full tanks and spare jerry cans, including plenty of petrol for the outboard. The dinghy is how you reach the villages, the shops and the reef, and a long row back against the trades is a poor way to end a day.