Panama Charter Itinerary

Panama Itinerary

Panama Yacht Charter
Panama is the only charter in the world where you begin in one ocean and end in another. The canal makes the country, and transiting it under your own keel ’ three sets of locks, a lake, a continental divide ’ is among the more extraordinary days available on a yacht.





Either side of it, the country is wilder than its reputation. The Pacific holds Coiba, a former penal colony whose isolation preserved its reef and forest intact. The Caribbean holds San Blas, hundreds of islands governed by the Guna, who have run their own affairs for a century.





Every route we shape is a starting point, not a fixed schedule. Stay a second day where the light is right, move with the weather, or follow a captain who knows the cove worth the detour. That freedom is the point of chartering. What follows is one considered way to read Panama; the rest we tailor to you.
Day 1

Panama City & the Pearl Islands

Start in Panama City, where glass towers stand across the bay from the ruins of the original settlement, sacked in 1671 and left where it fell. Board and run south to the Pearl Islands. Spanish galleons took pearls from these waters for two centuries. Now the archipelago is quiet: empty beaches, clear water, dinner at anchor.
Day 2

Islas Secas

West into the Gulf of Chiriquí and the Islas Secas, a scatter of small islands with reef on every side and almost nobody ashore. Snorkel or dive ’ the biodiversity here is exceptional, a meeting of currents that draws everything from reef fish to rays. Inland, if the day allows, the highlands at Boquete grow some of the best coffee in the world.
Day 3

Coiba National Park

Coiba was a prison island until 2004, which is precisely why it survives. Nobody logged it, nobody built on it, and the forest and reef came through the century intact. Scarlet macaws overhead, whitetip sharks and manta rays below. Dive with a guide, walk a jungle trail, and understand what this coast looked like before everywhere else was cleared.
Day 4

Pearl Islands

Back east to the Pearl Islands for a slower day. Dolphins work the channels between the islands, and humpbacks pass through from July. Isla San Telmo holds tidal pools and rock carvings whose age nobody has settled. Swim, fish, take the tender through the mangroves, and turn in early: tomorrow starts before dawn.
Day 5

The Panama Canal

The transit. Gatun, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores, lifting the yacht eighty-five feet to a lake made by damming a river, then setting it down again in a different ocean. It is the work of thirty years, forty thousand men and a great many lives. Anchor that night at Portobelo, on the Caribbean side, having crossed a continent.
Day 6

Portobelo

Portobelo was where Spain gathered the silver of the Americas before shipping it home, and where Drake died offshore and was buried in a lead coffin nobody has found. The forts still guard an empty bay. Ashore, the Church of San Felipe holds the Black Christ, carried through the streets each October. Sixteen dive sites lie within reach.
Day 7

San Blas

End in the San Blas islands, home of the Guna, who won autonomy in 1925 and have kept it since. Hundreds of islands, most no bigger than a tennis court, each with its palms and its ring of white sand. Buy a mola from the women who sew them, swim in water that shelves for miles, and take dinner ashore on an island of your own.

Panama Yacht Charter Enquire

Enquire about chartering in Panama to receive current yacht availability, seasonal guidance and expert insight into the cruising areas, anchorages and experiences that best fit your preferred style of charter, creating a clearer route to the right itinerary.