I went to the marina office first thing in the morning to discuss our situation. We were tied up on the end of a T reserved for the 007 movie shoot. The dock master Russ is a nice guy but he insisted that we would fit into the slip with the mono hull and he also insisted that we could not stay on the T.

After moving our soon to be neighbor all the way over to their side, the space did pace off to be about 32 feet. Not a lot of room to spare with a 26 foot 4 inch cat. When I got back to the boat one of the director's minions was asking Margaret (who was alone aboard) to move the boat "five minutes ago".

That made the options pretty clear. Margaret and I moved the boat over to the new slip and carefully squeezed Swingin' on a Star in with a nice breeze in the teens to help out. The marina was now officially packed.

Shelter Bay is a nice new marina. The restaurant is decent, although the service is reminiscent of the eastern Caribbean, if not worse. The showers are nice but only some have hot water. There are shuttles to the market and good access to other services. They have free water and 110v 60Hz power, which is nice for us US boats.

It is a great place to meet other cruisers as well. Many of the folks here are going through the canal or have just come through. Most have cruised some very interesting places.

Unfortunately the canal is very backed up at the moment. I guess there are always a lot of large ships anchored about but presently there are more than normal because there has been a bit of a canal pilots dispute brewing. It is worse yet for small boat because they are only sending three through a day and this is the season for folks going south.

A friend on another SF50 went through about two or three weeks ago and only waited three days. We decided to use the same agent and he is currently quoting us four weeks! Not to mention the fact that the admeasurers claim they can't come out to Shelter Bay while the movie shoot is going.

Perhaps we will get to cruise up to Bocas del Toro and Costa Rica for a bit after all...