I had a cabbage panic. This is not something I ever had when living in a house. We are about to embark on 5 or 6 or 7 weeks at sea. Not sure. The wind and currents will decide. Freshies become a bit of an obsession. And some things last better than others. Cabbages are up there!

What this meant was a final trip into a supermarket to acquire 4 white cabbages and an extra 20 oranges. No scurvy on this boat. Panama has reinstated lockdown so we were back to negotiating two hour windows when it was possible to be officially out and about from your home.

Yesterday evening at 6pm we officially left Panama City. All checked out with stamps in our passports and official paperwork. Grace has survived her last days in Las Brisas anchorage when a 60 foot tree tried to eat her. Our buddy Bill did some fending one day.

The tree revisited us as were about to get into bed at 11pm on night. We’d been out socialising hence the late night. I was aware of a scratching noise so onto deck I went. The blighter was being pushed into the hull by the current and wind. After lopping a few branches, (yes we have tree loppers on board) into the dinghy we hopped with the big torch and a line of rope.

20 minutes later we’d pulled the thing away from all the main part of the anchorage and let it go just above a sunken mast, hoping the branches would catch on this. There was no really good place to let it go and taking it to the shore was a non starter. All fun and games before bed.

I will get round to posting something brief again before we leave. Keep an eye out in a day or so. And as many tv shows say….here’s a reminder.

You can follow our progress should you choose on the tracking page of the blog. You have to click on this web link …..

http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/GraceofLongstone

If we’re going slow, or it stops for some reason, don’t automatically go into panic mode. It’s computery stuff. Things break and stop working. We have amongst other things a sat phone, an SSB radio, a new life raft, a big torch and cabbages.