1 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
We were up at 0545, when our Advisor arrived. Roy was allocated to the catamaran and so we had a different Advisor today. I'd been a little concerned about how officious the Advisors were going to be, but the ones that we met were very pleasant guys, spoke good English and chatted away happily about the canal and the wildlife in the Gatun Lake, which is a nature reserve.
We were soon under-way to travel the 25 miles to the Pedro Miguel Lock. We had a slot booked at midday, so the Advisor had us slowly motored along at 4-5 knots. Surprisingly there was no ship going through the lock with us, so we were rafted up with the French catamaran and went through the two chambers alone. Even though they used lock gates that halved the capacity of the chambers, it was still a massive amount of water used up for two small yachts.
The procedures though the locks were the same as yesterday, but we were now going down from Gatun Lake to the Pacific Ocean. We cleared the final chamber of the Miraflores Lock and motored out into the Pacific Ocean at around half past two.
We stopped at the mooring field at the Balboa Yacht club and were met by a small launch, which picked up the shore-lines and tyres – Bill had to pay $1 per tyre to dispose of them. Glenys, Rocky and I said goodbye to Bill, Lara & Isobel and then hopped aboard the launch to go ashore.
We caught a taxi from the Yacht Club to the bus station ($6), took the express bus to the Quatro Altos shopping mall in Colon ($3 each) and then got a taxi back to the marina ($20). We were back at half past five and retired to the bar for dinner with other cruisers.
2 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
We spent all day sorting ourselves out ready to start our journey back to the UK tomorrow and to get some things shipped in from the States through Marine Warehouse. I was hoping to buy a new, slightly smaller guitar when we get back to the UK, but after reading about United Airline’s baggage allowances, I decided that it would be too much hassle to bring a guitar back. Instead, I contacted Marine Warehouse and they’ll ship a guitar out to Panama for $15 – this is good news because guitars are 30% cheaper in the USA than in the UK. I just hope that it survives being shipped out here.
The afternoon was spent doing the final packing and, exhausted, we retired to the bar for dinner.
3 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina to Panama City, Panama
We caught the express bus to Panama City and then a taxi to our luxury five star hotel. It didn't cost us anything for the hotel which we booked using air miles that we've accumulated over the past year. Nice hotel.
After we’d settled in, we went out for a walk to get some lunch and ended up catching a taxi to the old city for only $3 – taxis are so cheap in Panama City. We had a sandwich in a café and then wandered around the very touristy area. We went into the Panama Canal museum, but were disappointed because all of the exhibits were in Spanish, so we couldn't really understand what they were talking about – at least it was air conditioned.
4 July 2013 Panama City to UK
We caught a taxi to the airport and caught a plane to Dallas in Texas – not too bad a flight – only five hours with reasonable movies. We were a little concerned that our connection to the transatlantic flight was a little tight at 2½ hours, but Dallas is a superb airport geared up to international transits, unlike some of the other USA airports that we've passed through. We didn't have to collect our bags and they had an express immigration clearance for transient passengers, so we were at our boarding gate within 30 minutes.
The flight to London was tedious – nine hours in a cramped seat in steerage. We picked up a hire car and were at our son, Brett’s house by one o'clock. Not too bad a journey – only 24 hours.
5 July to 23 July 2013 Various Places in UK
We stayed at Brett’s house for a couple of nights to recover from our jet lag then set off on an odyssey around the UK, visiting family & friends and buying stuff that we couldn't get in Panama. We rented a house in Hastings, a small seaside town and spent four fabulous days with our two sons and their partners, eating fish and chips and generally chilling out - we were very lucky with the weather because it was blue skies for the whole time that we were in the UK.
It was an exhausting three weeks because everyone we visited wanted to entertain us, so we were staying up too late and drinking too much every night. I went to see our doctor, who sent me for a routine blood test and it came back showing a problem with my liver - he told me that I need to cut back on the drinking… We also went to see our dentist, which resulted in a couple of fillings and bought new glasses & contact lenses after having our eyes tested.
We dropped off some boat gear that we’d brought back to the UK – Comar repaired our AIS-Multi unit for free; Standard Horizon tested our portable VHF radio that seemed to be very low power and supplied us with a new antenna for no charge; and Ambassador Marine checked our Rope Stripper and provided some spare parts at a very nominal cost – it’s nice to find helpful suppliers.
We bought so much stuff that we had to pack it into two extra bags. One of the heaviest items was a new Lower Rudder Shoe, which is a large bronze casting weighing 20 kilograms. Fortunately, it split into two halves, so I was able to pack each half away into separate bags. We ended up with four bags, all just below the 23Kg weight limit.
A few days before we flew out, we travelled up to the Wirral with Glenys’s brother, Gareth and scattered Glenys’s mother’s ashes, which was a poignant end to our visit.
24 July 2013 UK to Panama City, Panama
The night before our flight, we stayed at Brett’s house and had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to make the six o'clock check-in. We were expecting to have some hassle about having two extra bags, but it all went smoothly – we just had to pay an extra $200US.
The flight out to Newark (near New York) was packed, but it went quickly because they had a good entertainment system with on-demand films – I maxed out and watched three movies back to back.
In Newark, it was a pain having to clear through immigration and customs. We picked up our luggage from the carousel and had to drop them off by a conveyor belt, where our precious bags were dumped on the floor with hundreds of other bags. I wanted to wait until our luggage had been loaded onto the belt but, after ten minutes, the pile was just getting bigger and it was obvious that we’d be waiting a long time, so we gave up and left our bags to their fate.
We had four hours of waiting around to catch the flight to Panama City – I hate airport lounges. The flight itself was cramped and had no films, so I tried to sleep and was rewarded with a cricked neck.
Initially everything went smoothly on arrival at the airport, we sailed through immigration and amazingly, all four of our bags arrived safely. Unfortunately, the customs officers were scanning every bag with an X-ray machine and of course they spotted the two halves of the large bronze rudder shoes that I was bring back from the UK. They wanted to know what they were, so in halting Spanish I tried to explain that this was for “mi barco” - this didn't help and we were taken to one side to explain.
Unfortunately, no one spoke any English and it was nine o'clock in the evening. I produced some clearance documentation for our boat and a letter written in Spanish stating that we were berthed at Shelter Bay Marina and asking the authorities to assist us as required. All this documentation seemed to placate them a little bit, but they were insisting that we leave our bags with them and go back the next morning, probably to see a more senior officer.
In typical Latin American style, a couple more customs officers wandered up and we continued to argue that we were on a “barco in transito” and that it would cost us lots of money for us to go to our hotel and then come back again. Eventually, after much waving of hands, they decided that we were too much trouble and let us go – phew!
We finally arrived at our hotel in Panama City at half past ten, had one nice, cold beer and collapsed into bed.
25 July 2013 Panama City to Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
We had a lie in and a leisurely cooked breakfast in a fabulous restaurant on the top floor of the hotel, looking out over the skyscrapers of Panama City.
We decided to take a taxi back to marina. We could have taken the express bus to the Quatro Altos shopping centre in Colon and then a taxi back to the marina, but the bus would have dropped us off at a crossroads and we would have had to lug our four heavy bags a quarter of a mile from the intersection to the shopping mall. “Hey look at us - a couple of gringos with four big heavy bags. Come and rob us!” The taxi cost $140, but was well worth it.
Back in the marina, we were glad to see Alba still floating and dry as a bone inside – it was a good idea to have dehumidifier running while we were away. It was very hot inside the boat, but I soon had the air conditioner going and we spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking our bags and stowing everything away in lockers. Surprisingly, it all disappeared somewhere.
We retired to the bar for happy hour and dinner - same old faces in the bar; it feels like we never left.
26 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
It was our 33rd wedding anniversary today and we both forgot until I switched on my laptop and received a reminder. I gave Glenys a kiss and that was the end of our celebration - who says romance is dead.
I went to see the Boat Yard Manager to make sure that we would be hauled out tomorrow. To my horror, I had to pay up-front for the haul out and for seven days on the hard – that’s another $1,000 leaking out of our bank account. Back on the boat, I depressed myself further by reconciling our bank accounts and discovering how much we’ve spent in the past month.
Glenys took a load of washing to the launderette and sweated in the 35 degree heat with 80% humidity – welcome back to Panama… Then in the afternoon, she went to the shopping mall on the marina courtesy bus to buy some provisions.
I spent the rest of the day updating my to-do-list and preparing for the haul-out.
We have six main jobs to do:
1. Replace the Lower Rudder Shoe – this holds the bottom of the rudder in place. The bearing surface has worn, making the rudder rattle when we’re going down wind. So I've carried a new Lower Rudder Shoe back from the UK.
2. Replace the Upper Rudder Bearings and Seals – we have a slight leak from the seals, so I've decided that while I'm working on the rudder, I might as well replace the top bearings.
3. Sort out the leak in aft bilge – we have water seeping up through the floor of the bilge through small cracks. I've been told by Hallberg Rassy that the water is probably seeping past the outside of the stern tube, so I have to seal it.
4. Change the engine timing belt
5. Change the leaking crankshaft oil seal on the generator
6. Apply anti-fouling paint to the hull. It was only done a year ago, but we’ll probably not haul out again until we’re in New Zealand in eighteen months’ time.
I'm hoping that if all goes well, we’ll only be on the hard for a week…
27 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
We were up early and motored around to the haul-out dock. Every boat yard has a different procedure for hauling out and this was one of the most thorough that I've seen– the boat yard foreman (Victor) actually dived into the water to make sure that the slings were in the correct place and weren't going to damage anything underwater.
Once we were out of the water, the bottom of the boat looked pretty good with very few barnacles and only a bit of green slime, but I had them give it a good pressure wash – we've already bought three gallons of anti-foul paint which should be enough for two full coats of paint.
By late morning, they’d moved Alba into the working boatyard, secured the stands and we had the air conditioner working - it was very pleasant on board again. After lunch, it took a great effort to drag myself outside into the heat and start work.
I managed to remove the propeller without too much trauma, but removing the cutlass bearing housing was a mission. I didn't have a pipe wrench big enough to do the job, so I wandered around and borrowed some tools from Dave on “Elisium” and Jerry on “Vida Dulce”. Dave kindly came over and gave me a hand to get the damn thing off – it took two of us to get it to unscrew from the stern tube.
I then cut away the fibre glass sheathing from the Lower Rudder Shoe, but couldn't move any of the seven bolts holding it in place, which have very large screw-driver slots rather than hex keys. I’ll have to come up with a solution tomorrow.
We have a large inventory of paper charts that cover the Caribbean, which we no longer need if we’re going across the Pacific Ocean, so Glenys took fifty charts to the marina lounge and left a notice on the notice board that there are free charts available.
Pretty exhausted, we fell into bed at half past eight.
28 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
It didn't rain for most of the day, so I managed to get a fair amount of work done, but it was all frustratingly slow. My aim was to replace the upper seals and bearings on the rudder shaft, which was easier said than done.
I removed the mattresses from the aft cabin, exposing the top end of the rudder shaft and the steering mechanism, then spent an hour making sure that I understood exactly what I needed to do and documenting the positions of the various components – I need to get everything back into the original positions to make sure that it all works correctly.
It took me over an hour to remove the autopilot arm and the steering quadrant. I then removed the upper bearing assembly – that took another couple of hours because everything was seized and in a tight location. At one point, the instructions from Hallberg Rassy say “Slide off the upper collar and radial bearing”, what I actually did was to “struggle for an hour, while hanging upside down, hammering the bearing using a large screwdriver and a 2lb lump hammer, ensuring that knuckles on both hands are bruised.”
With the upper bearing assembly removed, I loosened the lower bearing assembly and tried to lower the rudder as per the instructions, but the lower bearing assembly was firmly seized in place. After an hour of “coaxing” with my trusty 2lb lump hammer and anti-seize oil, I managed to move the locking collar about an inch, but I couldn't get it off the shaft.
I think that I'm going to have to remove the rudder completely, so I separated the Lower Rudder Shoe from the skeg. This wasn't simple either – I had to grind a chisel to fit the slots in the seven screws that I couldn't budge yesterday, but after an hour, I had the bolts out and the shoe removed. The rudder is now only supported by the seized lower bearing assembly, but I still can’t get it to drop down – very frustrating.
We packed up at five o'clock and had dinner on-board. I was so tired that I went to bed half way through watching a movie – I'm obviously not used to this physical labour.
29 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
First thing in the morning, I went into the boat yard office and arranged for the yard to prepare the bottom of the boat and to apply our three gallons of anti-foul paint. It’s going to cost $500, but it saves us three days of hard labour and means that I can concentrate on the rudder problem, which is more critical.
It threw it down first thing in the morning, but by ten o'clock it was dry enough to work outside. I spent an hour trying to twist, lever and hammer the bearing assembly on the rudder, but couldn't shift it. I asked Greg, the local mechanic, to have a look at the problem. He spent another fifteen minutes twisting, levering and hammering the bearing assembly with his sledge hammer, but we weren’t any further forwards.
After a quick discussion, Greg agreed with me that the only way that we were going to shift it was to heat the bearing assembly to expand it a little and then to hammer the rudder shaft down to lower the whole rudder out of the boat. Using his propane torch, Greg started to heat the bronze sleeve around the bearing assembly, but after a few minutes, the valve on his propane torch started to leak and it flared up with 2 foot high flames. Fortunately, I had a fire extinguisher close to hand and soon put it out – it's the first time that I've had to use an extinguisher in earnest. Greg was okay – he just lost some hairs off his forearm.
Greg went off to find another propane torch, so I had a "bash" at knocking the shaft down and discovered that I could move it! By the time he came back ten minutes later, I’d managed to move the shaft by two inches – heating the bearing collar had obviously worked. I told Greg that I could finish off by myself and, two hours later, I had the rudder lowered to the ground with the bearing assembly & the leaking shaft seals removed.
I spent the remaining part of the afternoon cleaning the various parts and fitting the replacement seal and lower bearing. This was more complicated than it should have been because I had to grind out the inside of the bearing which was too tight on the rudder shaft and I also had to re-tap the locking screw holes in the locking collar. By the end of the day, the rudder was suspended on the lower bearing assembly – all I have to do now is to refit the upper bearing, and reconnect the autopilot and steering mechanism.
Glenys spent most of the day cleaning the topsides with “Off & On” which is a marvellous, if highly toxic chemical, which really whitens up the fibreglass.
We went to the bar for happy hour and dinner.
30 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
The electricity went out again last night. I've been told that the local villains drop a tree onto the electricity cable running along the side of the road and when the power goes off, they roll up a substantial length of the copper cable and steal it. It happens quite regularly.
Glenys went off to the shopping mall, while I continued to put the rudder bearings and steering gear back together. It all went fairly well, with only a couple of traumas and I had it all finished by two o'clock in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the yard labourers were working on the bottom of the hull, preparing the surface for the anti-foul paint.
With the upper bearings sorted on the rudder, I tackled the Lower Rudder Shoe. This is a large phosphor bronze casting which splits into two halves, fitting onto the bottom of the skeg and has a bearing surface that holds the bottom of the rudder shaft. To ensure a tight fit to the skeg, the inside of the casting is filled with runny polyester paste.
I’d already removed the old shoe a couple of days ago, so I first chipped away the old polyester filler around the skeg, so that I could dry-fit the new shoe in place. As expected, none of the seven mounting holes in the new casting lined up with the holes drilled though the skeg, so I blocked them off with polyester filler ready to re-drill tomorrow . Actually, Dominique from “Kea” did it for me – he’s on the catamaran next door to us and used to run a fibre-glassing business back in France. He kindly offered to help me with the small bits of fibre-glassing that I have to do over the next couple of days.
Dominique and his wife (who is also called Dominique) are repairing the hull of their catamaran after they dragged onto a reef in the San Blas islands. They were hit by a very strong 60 knot squall and, despite running both of their engines, their two anchors didn't hold and they ended up on a reef. A small freighter happened to go past a couple of hours later and towed them off the reef and to Shelter Bay Marina for $1,500US (which is a bargain.) They've suffered extensive damage to both rudders and the bottom of their hull, but fortunately Dominique has the skills to repair it.
We had a quiet night in – a nice rotisserie chicken that Glenys bought at the supermarket today – yummy.
31 July 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
We had another huge thunderstorm in the early hours of the morning and it was still raining when we dragged ourselves out of bed. However, it soon started to brighten up – this seems to be the weather pattern here.
I spent most of the day fitting the Lower Rudder Shoe to the skeg. It took ages to drill the five new holes through the fibre glass skeg because I had to keep putting the shoe on and off to ensure that the holes lined up correctly. Once I had the shoe bolted up and held in place with wedges, Dominique came over and poured some very runny polyester filler into the cavity between the shoe and the skeg, effectively moulding the skeg to the inside of the shoe casting. A little later, he came over and used some thicker polyester paste to fair the outside of the casting to be flush with the rest of the skeg.
All I had to do then was to cut off the ends of the bolts protruding through the side of the casting and pump some grease into the bearing journal.
Once finished, I turned my attention to the stern tube. I've been getting water seeping past the stern tube and appearing in the aft bilges, so I want to put some sealant around the stern tube. I spent an hour scraping out the old sealant. It’s a bugger of a job because the sealant is at the bottom of a 30 mm deep slot that is only 4 mm wide. The only way that I could do the job is to use a very small screwdriver as a scraper - very tedious.
I've now got to put the new sealant around the stern tube, but ground to a complete standstill because I can’t figure out how to do it with the supplies that I have. I really need a syringe; a small diameter, two inch long tube; and some sealant that is fairly runny. The tube of 4200 sealant that I have is far too viscous and the nozzle is far too wide – Glenys is going to go to the hardware store tomorrow morning to try to buy some syringes.
The yard labourers put the first coat of anti-foul on today – they've not painted the rudder because I'm working on it, but they’ll be able to do that tomorrow. Things are looking good – I just need to sort out sealing the stern tube and we’ll be able to get back into the water.