It's been 7 months since we were last at a marina so over the last few days we have thoroughly enjoyed the marina life - endless amounts of water, electricity to run our AC, internet, onshore showers, restaurant etc.

Shelter Bay Marina is located on what used to be an US base called Fort Sherman. Fort Sherman served to protect the Gatun Locks portion of the Panama Canal. The developed areas included housing, barracks for 300, a small airstrip and various recreational areas. The land also included 23,100 acres of jungle which was used by the Jungle Operations Training Center to train both US and Central American forces in jungle warfare, with an enrollment of about 9,000 a year. Today most of the buildings are abandoned and the jungle has been turned into a national park.

During our stay at Shelter Bay there have been some decent highlights. We watched an enormous US warship go through the canal, explored Fort Sherman, saw white faced monkeys and got to play with a baby 3 toed sloth named Pippen that was rescued by a resident cruiser family at the marina. Despite my pleading Kent wasn't game for getting me my own sloth aboard Hiatus.

While here we took the marina shuttle to Colon where we drained our bank account at 3 different grocery stores. Our next destination is the San Blas Islands where there are no services of any kind and with 4 people aboard for the next 4 weeks we wanted to make sure we had enough food. Right now I think we have enough to feed a small army and amazingly we found enough free space to stash 8 cases of beer.

Our fuel leak appears to have been fixed and so we are off to the islands which are east of the Panama Canal on the way to Columbia.

Thanks s/v Moody Blues for the picture shown above of Kent, Glen and Bob who are relaxing at the marina restaurant.