Shelter Bay Marina is quite nice. We appreciate plugging in to shorepower, not having to use
our watermaker for potable water and unlimited hot showers ashore – “if i had
to give up civilization one piece at a time, the last piece i’d let go of would
be a hot shower” – altho at 9 degrees north in July, cold showers are almost as
good as hot. They have a pool
here, a mini-mart, a small chandlery, a gym, a restaurant, and a free van
service into and out of Colon…
So we get busy catching up with business, e-mail and
chores. I call the Canal Authority
and fax to them the info they want, requesting a transit asap. We get on the fuel barge’s schedule. Start cleaning the boat
thoroughly. Rima does a ton of
laundry. She sprays waterproofing
on the dodger. Tizz rebeds any
leaks that have shown up. I patch
the dinghy floor one more time before we pack it away. I re-leather the bobstay. Drop off one propane tank to be
re-filled. We begin provisioning
for our crossing to Hawaii… Each
of us needs time to catch up with e-mail and arrange banking and details for
when we are at sea. I skype call
Tyler… after his tri-athalon. You
get the idea.
Don and Polly arrive, hugs all around. The admeasurer approves Akimbo for
transit if we stow the solar panels, buy an air horn and buy bottled water for
our Canal pilot . All of which we
will do. Whereupon we amass all
of our cash to make Akimbo’s deposit with the Canal, which then allows me to
call and request a transit date…which it sounds like we will get. I need to keep calling and confirming
until we are underway.
The cab ride into Colon and the bank where i make our
deposit is illuminating. After
getting into town, Benjamin, our driver, asks for half the round trip fair so
he can buy a 50 pound bag of corn.
He lives 15 minutes out of town and this will save him having to come
back in. “Hand to mouth” living, i
think to myself. Enroute to his
purchase, he takes us thru the slums of Colon and explains it was once very
beautiful. Now it looks bombed and
burned. “Muy triste” (very sad), i
say. How is it that Panama can be
so short sighted and greedy to not invest in this port? So much money passing thru here and
none of it shared with the locals.
“Trickle down… doesn’t work.”
When he parks the car by the curb to go in and buy his corn, he goes to
the nearest policeman and points out that he has tourists in his cab, telling
the man to keep trouble away from us.
I don’t dare get out of the car.
I would “stick out like a sore thumb.” Did i already admonish?..”when traveling in foreign
lands…make friends…or in other words, make no enemies.” Here i have to add…”don’t be
stupid.”
In between all this, we meet other yachties and locals. It’s the eye contact that counts. Benjamin the cabbie, Indira the waitress,
Joachim the engineer, the crew on a big boat nearby,…
The marina is adjacent to National Park lands. Hopefully we’ll do a little hiking and
have some fun between whatever it takes to move Akimbo forward.
By the way, it looks like our transit date will be Saturday
and Sunday, July 27 and 28.
Probably from about noon to noon.
And if you want to watch us go thru...you can? Yes. The Canal
has cameras at the locks which you can tune into at www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html. We’ll wave once in a while, just in
case you’re watching.
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