After an all day sail from Contadora we arrived at Panama City and hailed the Flamenco Marina on the VHF radio. After numerous attempts I finely got someone who confirmed they had a slip available. We got secured in our slip and headed for the marina restaurant for some food and beer. To our surprise the restaurant was a "Bennigan's" a U.S. chain. This is the first U.S. restaurant we have seen on our trip (we have seen some fast food joints).
We woke up the next morning and asked around for a good cab service. Luckily, we met Luis who became our "driver/agent/guide" for the week in Panama City. Luis has a new Toyota sedan and can speak English well.
Our first job of the day was to check into Panama through Immigration, Customs, and the Port Captain. This is usually an all day event but with Luis's help (he knows everyone at each office) we were also able to visit the Canal office and set-up a visit for the Admeasurer to measure our vessel for the transit of the Canal. It was a long day but we got so much done we couldn't believe it. We also had time to pick-up a Panamanian cell phone ($15).
We had to wait on our boat the next day for the Admeasurer to come to our boat. He arrived around 10:00 and it took about two hours to measure Four Points and fill out all the paperwork for our up coming Canal transit. That night (after 6:00 pm) we called the Canal office to set-up the date & time for our transit. Because our friends David & Cheryl Eakin were flying in to work as line handlers we scheduled five days out.
The next day we moved Four Points closer to the Canal entrance on a mooring at the famous Balboa yacht club. David & Cheryl are expected to arrive the next day and stay at the hotel overlooking the moorings. We are excited to see them. During this time I shopped for an outboard replacement. Our Johnson 15 HP is fourteen years old and we are worried about reliability. We found out we could get a Yamaha 15 HP for $500 cheaper than in the U.S. Coming down the coast we saw so many Yamahas (fisherman, yachts, etc) we realized that service & parts would be easier with a Yamaha. Luis drove us around to different dealers to do cost/weight comparison shopping but settled on a Yamaha 15 HP two stroke for $1800 delivered to the dock at Balboa yacht club (I posted the old Johnson on Craig's List Panama and it sold on the night before we were to transit).