From Panama

We've been settled in at Shelter Bay marina since last Wednesday but are getting antsy to move on now. But it was Carnival here for the past 4 days and everything stops for carnival! The admeasurer visit happened today so now we're clear to go through the canal. We're scheduled for February 29th, in the afternoon. The canal has a webcam so any seriously interested people can watch us go through. If it's like anything else here, there may be a delay. However logistically it is complicated, will get to that in a minute. Since we've been here, Jon has been struggling trying to get the autopilot motor replaced and physically here which is enough to make one go insane. When he took the motor apart, the brushes were in piles of carbon dust. This pump was just installed in Ft Pierce and is greatly oversized for our boat so something isn't right somewhere. Anyway, Fedex ground shipping is $350 each way and the company wants the original pump back to fulfill the warranty so.... that's $700 in shipping and it isn't like it would arrive overnight! So, it seems better to just buy a new pump ourselves and pay the shipping one way rather than deal with the warranty. We are exploring our options. Either way, we need a new pump! The parts for the wind generator are in Panama City with a notation "customs delay" which may just be Carnival delay but who knows?

In order to transit the canal, you need 4 linehandlers to handle the lines through all 6 locks- 3 at this end (Gatun Locks) and then the 3 on the Pacific side (Miraflores & Pedro Miguel) so I can be one, Jon will be steering and an advisor appointed by the canal will be onboard as well. It takes 2 days to transit so all the linehandlers stay aboard our boat overnight in Lake Gatun whereas the pilot gets off and then comes back in the AM. You need to feed everyone for each meal and the advisor expects his hearty meal at lunchtime as is the Latin custom, plus bottled water. Our agent supplies the 4 heavy duty lines and old, plastic wrapped car tires to be lined up along our varnished toerail every few feet. As I understand it, it will take 52 million gallons of water for our lock cycle. It will be $1000 for the transit, not including this pricey marina. We are going on our neighbor's boat tomorrow to be linehandlers for them and then when we go, Tim & Nathan will hopefully be able to help us and then we'll turn around and help them, and then we'll just have to find one other linehandler. There are many boats here from all over the world, some heading East, some heading West and everyone is bustling around trying to get things figured out. There are no marinas on the other side who have space so logistically, leaving the boat on anchor to come help someone else transit is hard. It is a 2 ½ hr bus ride from Panama City back to the marina so there's that little detail also. Plus, we all wanted to do some inland travel beforehand but of course we have to be back the day before transit to go by bus to Colon and get all the food to feed everybody because at Shelter Bay, you are isolated from the city. Plus we have to check out of this port and get a zarpe, which requires a couple days to get so there is that time figure too. Anyway, it'll all work itself out, it is just time consuming and hurts my head thinking about it. As it stands right now, we plan to head into the mountains of Panama to Santa Fe on Friday since we'll be in Panama City after helping our next slip neighbor Impiana transit. Looks like this little town has fincas, coffee plantations, mountain views, horseback riding, waterfalls for swimming and hiking trails. It'll be nice to see a bit of Panama's heart.

Shelter Bay marina runs a bus into the gritty city of Colon so we did that one day along with 20 or so other cruisers to try and get a few things that we needed. As long as you move from bus to taxi you are safe. It isn't a place to do anything fun or explore. On the way over, we crossed the Panana canal via ferry and on the way back, we took the road which crosses over the first lock. It feels funny to finally be here.
From Panama

We rented bikes from the marina a couple days ago to go to Fort San Lorenzo about 12km away, all through pristine park land, lovely, mature rainforest. The fort is at the opening of the Chagres River which supplies the bulk of the water for the canal. It was also the river where the most gold has passed through in history. We saw lots of monkeys & birds. It is pretty humorous to be riding along and hear this roar just like a lion but it is only the howler monkeys, way up in the trees. At a stand outside the fort, I bought a little vase made from the tagua nut- a rainforest nut that is popular for carving. It is a Panamanian craft. The guy thought we were nuts but we asked him (in spanish of course) if we could buy some nuts for Roland, Jon's dad since he wood carves. He had 2 on hand so we bought those and the little vase was just too cute to pass up.

I'll spare you all the details on the latest round of boat projects but rest assured we did do several of them over the past week. I even had to patch up some varnish from the passage over here- a futile effort really. We had to restitch a fitting on our sail, we experimented with deploying the spinnaker pole since we'll use that for the hopefully loads of downwind sailing we'll be doing and of course there is a lot of reading on the internet trying to educate ourselves on where we're heading. It seems the Galapagos is going to be really expensive and tedious to check in but we have no intention of not stopping there!

Shelter Bay marina sits on the old US military base- Fort Sherman. All of the old buildings are still here, just outside the marina and are in various stages of decay. On the way over to Colon, I felt sort of creeped out seeing these battered buildings but Jon says it is part of history so it doesn't bother him. The rainforest is very mature and therefore beautiful; we humans sure know how to wreck a place. The marina is very comfortable with nice facilities and it's a great place to meet people and stage your transit. It can feel stifling after a few days too. Well that and it really is stifling hot here!

We're feeling better from the ciguatera or at least learning to tolerate the symptoms so that is good.

Tim & Nathan came over for dinner tonight; we have to keep reviewing our schedule so we can all keep it straight. With any luck it will work out as we planned. Who would have thought when we met Tim back in 2007 at Shipyard Quarters that we'd be cruising together now? You just never know what lies ahead do you?