23 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We both spent the morning preparing lists – I updated my “To Do” & “To Buy” lists, while Glenys updated her “Provisions” list and did a stock take. We’re getting ready to do some serious shopping when we get to Shelter Bay marina.
I picked up our head sail from the sail loft, which only cost me $30. Pat seems to have done a reasonable job of the sacrificial strip, but his sewing machine wasn’t powerful enough to repair some stitching around the clew of the sail, which has lots of layers. He said that he’s got a bigger machine arriving tomorrow and could do the rest by Friday, but I don’t want to hang around any longer. It’s not that critical and I’ll get it done in Panama City or Ecuador.
24 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We went into Sabanitas on the local bus to do a bit of shopping with Susan from “Vida Dulce”. These buses are ex-USA school buses, which have been painted in garish colours with some impressive graphics (even though they have holes in the floor). The ride took about an hour and was very bouncy along the narrow, winding road following the coast line.
Susan took us to a small shop that specialises in refrigeration equipment, where I was able to buy three more cans of R143a refrigerant to top up our leaking fridge. I was starting to get desperate because I was down to the last can and if I run out we’ll not have any cold beer.
Glenys only bought enough food to last a few more days because we couldn't carry too much on the crowded bus back – it doesn't matter since we’ll be doing some major shopping when we get to Shelter Bay marina. Unfortunately, we just missed a bus going back and had to hang around for an hour waiting for the next one, by which time a lot of people including a horde of school kids were waiting. It was a real fight getting on the bus, jostling with the school kids for a place - even so, I had to stand for half the journey. We were back on Alba by one o’clock and spent the rest of the afternoon recovering from the sensory overload of civilisation after five weeks in the San Blas.
Jerry and Susan from “Vida Dulce” are having some of their cupboards replaced on their catamaran and the carpenter has been working on their boat for two weeks now. As they are currently living in a building site, we invited them over for dinner to give them some respite.
25 September 2013 Portobello to Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
We left the anchorage mid-morning and arrived in Shelter Bay Marina at two o‘clock after four hours of motoring directly into the light wind – typical, we haven’t sailed for months! It was an effortless journey, with a only a small amount of stress monitoring the ships entering and leaving the busy port.
Sadly, the marina staff have put us into exactly the same berth as we were in seven weeks ago – it feels like we never left. I plugged in the air-conditioning and we’re now in luxury. Everything on the boat was getting very damp, so it will be good to dry everything out.
I picked up an internet connection and contacted our agent, Erick at Centenario about going through Canal – he hopes that the Canal Authority Admeasurer can come out tomorrow – he’ll let me know tomorrow morning. I now need to find three extra people to come through with us as line handlers.
In the evening, we went to the bar for happy hour and stayed for dinner. Dave and Wendy from “Elysium” are still here and Tony and Gail from “Cetacia” also arrived today, so it was a noisy group as we all caught up.
26 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
I spent most of the day on the internet and seeing people, while Glenys spent most of the day walking back and forth to the laundry. She did six loads of washing, so we now have clean clothes – some of our dirty washing has been hanging about for eight weeks and was ready to walk out of the bag by itself.
The Admeasurer came and filled in the various forms - he reckons that are 45.5 feet long including the arch. I’m happy enough with that because the price only goes up if you are longer than 50 feet. Erick turned up an hour later and went through a few things.
When the Admeasurer filled in all the forms, I didn't pay enough attention and I've signed a form that says that I’m willing to transit using the side wall of the chamber. Erick says that it’s not normal, but shouldn't be a problem. I've become very blasé about officials filling in forms – I’m going to pay more notice in future.
My parts arrived from Marine Warehouse – a new boat speed panel because the LCD display on ours has finally succumbed to sun damage. I also bought three, 20 micron filters for the watermaker which was a relief because I was down to the last one.
I had to ring UPS because they still hadn't delivered the replacement earth relay for the generator which was sent from Germany two weeks ago. They were very good and delivered it in the afternoon without charging us anything extra – we’d been told that they charge $50 for delivering out to Shelter Bay Marina most of the time, so I consider myself lucky.
Yesterday, I asked the marina to provide me with a 220V supply, so that I can put our batteries on charge. They connected it up today, but it’s 60Hz and a bit dodgy because they just join two 110V phases together. In the UK, we have three wires - a Line, a Neutral and an Earth - normally there’s 230V between the Line and Neutral and no voltage between Neutral and Earth. Here I have 220V between the Line and Neutral, 110V between Line and Earth and 110V between Neutral and Earth. This is very strange and I didn't want to feed this into our shore power connection, so I’ve wired up a separate feed to our spare battery charger – which seems to work okay.
While Glenys was in the laundry, she chatted to Scott from “Yollata”, who told her that Joachim from “Vela” was interested in being a line handler. An hour later, (before we could track him down) Joachim turned up at our boat and we immediately agreed to take him, which gave us our first line handler. Later in the afternoon, I wandered over to talk to Walter and Jacqui on “Jean Marie”, who are friends of “Vanupieds”. It only took me five minutes to recruit them as line handlers, so we now have a full complement of crew, which is a relief.
We went to the bar for Happy Hour again, but had dinner back on Alba and watched a movie in the luxury of the air-conditioned saloon.
27 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
I didn't sleep well. I woke up at two o’clock worrying about having said that we’d accept transiting the Canal using the side wall of the chamber. I can remember looking at the swirling water and the rough lock walls when we went through with “Sunrise” and thinking “Thank God we’re not alongside.” So, I just HAD to get up and send an email to Erick asking him to try to tell the Canal Authority that we’d made a mistake.
Then a thunderstorm came through and I had to get up to put our small electronics into the oven. Then I lay there worrying. Then I got up again to go to the toilet…
In the morning, we went into Quatro Altos shopping mall on the marina courtesy bus and took taxi into downtown Colon to the Post Office to try to pick up some mail that has been sent from the UK. They couldn't find any trace of it, which is a nuisance because we’re expecting two letters – one contains some new credit cards and the other one has Glenys’s spare glasses & contact lenses which she left behind in the UK. However, there’s not much we can do about it. After six weeks, we can only assume that they’re lost or probably stolen.
Colon town is a real dump. It could be a lovely place because there are lots of colonial buildings similar to Havana, but the locals don’t seem to care about the place and just squat in the old buildings. In addition, the streets are filthy and there are huge piles of garbage just lying around on the streets and any piece of waste ground. The people of Colon are mostly of Afro-Caribbean descent and have a different attitude to the whiter Latinos that are found in the wealthy Panama City. There’s such a culture difference that most of the employees of businesses in the Trade Free Zone (and Shelter Bay marina) come from Panama City and travel for 1½ hours to get to work every day. The Latinos think that the Colon people are lazy.
Yesterday, we discovered that the El Rey supermarket would transport us and our shopping back to Shelter Bay in a van if we spent more than $300. We had to arrange a specific time in advance, but it was a handy service. Taking advantage of this, we bought lots of heavy drinks and tins of food – 8 cases of beer, 20 litres of wine, 2 cases of soft drinks, 12 litres of coke, 12 litres of orange juice, 12 litres of milk, etc, etc. We had four large trolleys full of food by the time we checked out at a cost of $650 - it’s a bit bad when the till roll is over seven feet long.
Back on the boat, Glenys spent most of the afternoon updating her stock list and putting it all away. Meanwhile, Erick our Canal agent sent me an email confirming that we’re now scheduled to go through the Canal on the 3rd & 4th October, which is exciting. He also said that he’ll be talking to the Canal scheduling department and telling them that we don’t want to go through on the side wall, which is a relief.
We gave the Happy Hour a miss tonight – we needed a rest.
28 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
I spent the morning updating my live website, which I was shocked to find out hadn't been updated for over three months.
In the afternoon, I did some work on the generator. I snorkeled down to see if we had any more sooty deposits coming out of the exhaust. We've only run the generator for a couple of hours since I last cleaned it off the hull, but it looks encouragingly clean – perhaps cleaning the air filter has done the job. I’ll leave it for a few weeks and check it again. If it reoccurs, I think that my next action will be to remove the exhaust elbow and check for any obstructions causing the poor combustion. I chatted to Greg (the local mechanic) and he doesn't think that it will be the injectors because the generator starts and runs okay.
I changed the earth relay on the generator - I had a senior moment and wired it back to front, so I had to install it twice. I was very lucky that I didn't damage anything when I tried to start the generator, but it all seems okay now.
29 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
Having a good Internet connection, I foolishly decided to continue to rebuilding my laptop with a new hard disk. I spent all day down-loading software and installing stuff. There’s an incredible amount of reliance on the internet – I couldn't have done most of it without a good connection.
Glenys dragged out her sewing machine and started to make a new aft flap for our bimini to keep rain out of the cockpit when we’re sailing downwind. We’re very well protected going upwind or on a reach, but as soon as the wind gets behind us, we have to shut the companion way and put on wet weather gear.
During the afternoon, a guy stopped me on the dock and said that he’d seen my advert for my old guitar. He took one look at it, plucked the strings once and gave me $150 for it. I’m glad that it’s sold because we now have much more space in the front cabin.
30 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
It’s only three days before we transit the Panama Canal. We both caught the courtesy bus and had them drop us off at the Novey hardware store, which is very good. Having bought most things from my “To Buy” list, we caught a taxi back to Quatro Altos for the grand sum of $1.25 each. Glenys went off to the El Rey supermarket to buy some more provisions, while I went to the chandlers and bought some varnish and two more jerry jugs for drinking water.
I also went into the Digicel shop and bought a 30 day prepaid data card for Glenys’s fancy Android phone. I was hoping to use it as a modem for my PC, but I can’t get the phone to connect to the Internet, which is very frustrating. I mentioned it to Dave from “Elysium” at happy hour and he thinks that I’ll need to configure the “Access Point Name” whatever the hell that is. I’ll check it out tomorrow.
While Glenys packed away her latest provisions, I continued loading my laptop and transferring data from the old disk to the new disk drive – what a laborious process.
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