Mystery in Paradise, February 2011
 
In February 2011, we learned via the Southwest Caribbean SSB Net (a daily short-wave radio conference of cruisers like us) that a boat named 'Wind Dancer', with its single- handed skipper Don North, was overdue on a passage from the San Blas Islands of Panama to Zapzurro, Colombia, directly east of the 200-mile long San Blas archipelago. "Boat watch" notices like this are not uncommon, and generally the boats are seen, or they report in, within a few days.

In this case, although there were no reports of sightings, various cruisers continued to add more bits and pieces of information: Don had been planning to sail to Colombia to renew his Panamanian tourist visa (for which one has to leave Panama for 48 hours), and was variously thought to be bound for Zapzurro or Cartagena or somewhere between those two ports, or even coastal hopping along the more remote San Blas islands. He had been seen in company with a short, swarthy man named 'Javier Martín' who was said to be Spanish and who might have accompanied Don on his Colombian trip; and the man 'Martín' had apparently left his boat 'Green Twilight' anchored in a remote but protected spot in the San Blas.

When we recounted this information to friends newly arrived from Linton, Panama, they told us of another incident: the body of the French owner of 'Le Levante', a beat-up steel catamaran, had been found, tied to an anchor in the bay, apparently the victim of a murder. Don's disappearance and this other man's murder appeared to be a coincidence, as there was no known connection between the two men. When we asked around about this, we heard a rumor that the owner of 'Le Levante' had claimed recently to have $10,000 in cash.

Another rumor said that Javier Martín's boat 'Twyla' had gone on a reef in the San Blas; however, when Martín's description was disseminated on the net, another cruiser said he had met the captain of the boat that had sunk on that reef, and the captain did not look at all like the description of Martín. Nonetheless, the similarity between the names 'Twyla' and 'Green Twilight' raised our suspicions that the same person might have owned both boats.

The next word we got was that Panamanian officials had showed up at the anchorage where 'Green Twilight' was moored and towed the boat away to Porvenir, which is the Port of Entry to Panama in the western San Blas. Then a cruiser took a snapshot of 'Green Twilight' in Porvenir and sent it to several friends who immediately identified the boat as 'Wind Dancer'. It seemed clear to all of us that Martín must have done away with Don and taken his boat.

By now Don had been missing for several weeks, and Don's family had reported his disappearance to the US Embassy in Panama City. Upon the discovery of Don's boat under a different name, the FBI and Panamanian officials announced they were looking for Javier Martín, and asked that further details of Don's disappearance not be broadcast on SSB or VHF nets, for fear of giving Martín or his accomplices information they could use to avoid capture.

They may have worried about us disseminating information, but that didn't stop the TV and radio media in Panama from broadcasting the possible murder/theft, complete with photos of Martín. A day later, people in a village in the Darien Wilderness reported seeing someone who liked like Martín, and the authorities picked him up. Apparently, Martín was attempting to hire a canoe to take him downriver to the Pacific, from where he intended to make his way to Colombia. They searched his belongings and found, along with two pistols and a semiautomatic rifle, $13,000 and at least one of Don North's credit cards.

Meanwhile, there is no further news about Le Levante, and not even a rumor about possible connections between that boat and Javier Martín. But we think that although we know what happened to Don North, we still don't have the whole story.