I’m compiling a list of the worst ways to be woken up. To that list I’d like to suggest sea water over the head. Impact, instant grumpiness. Not just QI, quite irritating, but QFI.

We’d come back into Panama City. We had received authorisation from the maritime medical doctor and the immigration authorities that we could check in…..again. Recall. When the world was your oyster and travel and personal connections were something to relish and gaily indulge in, we’d checked out of Panama. We were on our way across the Pacific. Then the relish and gaily indulgence disappeared and we thought and felt it was inappropriate to head towards a small group of islands mid Pacific that had formally closed their borders.

To complete our paperwork formalities, we took a mooring ball at Balboa Yacht Club. It’s just off the main shipping channel where all vessels, big, small and bloody humongous pass, going to or from the Miraflores Lock. Inevitably there’s quite a lot of sloppy water as all ships create wash. The wash can be evil.

We have 4 cute round port holes in the hull of Grace. At sea they are always closed but its pretty hot here so we had a couple open to get as much airflow through the boat as possible. We’ve been in bed for maybe 20 minutes. I was in that screen saver state between awake and asleep.

You know how this goes without me being explicit. Grace was aligned so the porthole on my side of the bed was parallel to the channel. There was much hurumpfing. Enough said.

So we are now ‘official’ again. We have stocked up on some fresh veggies and fruit and tomorrow we will hightail it’s back to Isla Contadora which is where we’ve been hanging out.

The wait to decide our next move continues. The mended paddle board is no longer mended. The generator has a small water leak. The washing needs doing (by hand) so there’s stuff to keep us occupied. Oh, to have a walk in a beach though.