WordPress have ‘improved’ my customer experience by upgrading / changing how I post these missives. At this particular moment in time, I don’t believe this. I’m pondering the adage, just because you can change something, doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea.

It’s Sunday morning and there’s a bunch of stuff I plan to get done today. Super exciting things like washing potatoes before storing them and checking the draft accounts I sent to our accountant as he’s identified a error. Oops. My plan …..get up early, bash out a Blog post and crack on with the day. I’ve now spent a bunch of time looking how this new tangled system has been improved and made more intuitive. Maybe it will be in two months time, but today it most certainly isn’t!!

After three unexpected months in Panama, we are gearing up to check out and start journeying west across the Pacific. We’ve umm-ed and ahh-ed endlessly about setting off. The rights, the wrongs, the ups, the downs, the ins, the outs.

French Polynesia has presently controlled the Covid 19 outbreak and quarantine restrictions are being lifted. It feels a more appropriate time to be setting off as opposed to a couple of months ago. From a sailing perspective, setting off now, the winds are not so favourable and getting out of the bay of Panama could be a real pain in the backside. We know boats who have really struggled so we’re mentally preparing ourselves for this!

Every night here now, there are thunderstorms and lightning. Not necessarily where we sit but close enough to hear and see. Panama has a reputation for being one of the lightening capitals of the world. A boat was struck a few days ago here during the day in the anchorage off Panama City. Their electronics were fried. That’s a trip showstopper. It’s time to go.

I traded some slightly soft ‘fake’ werther’s original sweets for a friendship bracelet made by a 7 year old boy. With help from his younger brother. Mum said the boys were full of joy at the prospect of finding a boat with a supply of sweets. Even if the sweets were a bit old and dodgy.

They came over as a pair in the family dinghy. Big boy driving. Small boy clutching the bracelet. The trade was made. Just so sweet. The message that came via Mum when they got back to their boat said, ‘thank you sooooo much!! – two happy faces – better than Xmas – you were their angel today – thank you’.  So I’ve turned into aging hippy, sporting my new trade around my ankle. It’s has three colourful beads and I painted my toe nails the same blue as one of the beads to show it off. 😀

Wet season has officially arrived. Yesterday a blow came through the anchorage for a couple of hours with associated rain and wind. Everyone here held firm at anchor which is reassuring as we were all sat on a lee shore (meaning the wind was blowing towards the shore so if an anchor failed, that’s the direction you’d go). I wore a waterproof for the first time, in a long time as we sat in the cockpit keeping an eye on things. A round of chocolate cake helped us pass the time. Dave in fact described the cake as a necessity.

Wet season means humidity. Hot sticky dampness pervaded after the blow had departed. Not great for….sleeping, drying laundry or general comfort levels. Better get used to it. It’s here for a fair while.

Other news. After 3 attempts, the mend on the seam of my inflatable paddle board seems to be holding. It’s not the prettiest mend but that’s irrelevant. Eliminating escaping air sits above removing excessive black two part cement on the necessity list. This means we can head off together again on a board each. (how sweet I hear you say). We came back in the dark last night after a social gathering. It was quite serene paddling quietly in the pitch under the stars.

As clampdown is still current in Panama, we get visits from local guys in pangas, trying to secure any income possible, selling fish, provisions and fuel. A couple of decent sized fish cost around $5 which we’re happy to pay if we haven’t caught anything ourselves. We’ve also currently got a stash of avocados. Think we paid $2 for 8 so pretty reasonable when they come delivered to your boat. Avocados are green and green is good! We will mostly be eating fish and avocados for a while.

 

 

I wouldn’t consider myself to be a ‘mojo’ kind of person. But whatever it is, it’s felt like mine went walkabout for a few miserable days. Miserable for me, but also for Dave. Sorry mister. Can’t have been fun having a mojoless wife in a small space.

 

I just felt swamped, contained, restricted. My head was in conflict. The dichotomy of ‘sod it, let’s just go” against “its irresponsible and disrespectful” turning up in a country that isn’t your own and expect to be accepted in when their borders are officially closed. Our particular situation here in Panama, when we’d hoped to mid Pacific by now, felt endless to me.

 

My tried and tested solution when feeling confined is simple. Get out and walk. Space, hills, freedom, a goodly stomp provides a head clearing medicine which necessitates no chemical infusion. Thing is, this option is not currently available to us. No walking for Helen.

 

However. My mojo is back. I needed a change of scene. A change in energy. Something different. So for the last week or so we’ve been journeying around Las Perlas islands. It’s been great. Some cruising in company, some on our own. It’s been just what I needed. We’ve made a point of sailing everywhere. Uninhabited islands have meant we’ve been able to get ashore. Activities in the mix have included crocodile spotting, extreme frisbee, spear fishing, body surfing, card games, hull scrubbing and water making for a couple of other boats who’ve unfortunately had water-maker problems.

 

We’re currently anchored off San Jose island. There’s a posh resort here. (Hacienda del Mar Hotel – San José Island, Las Perlas, Panama if you want to look it up). At present, rain lashes, thunder rolls and lightning sparks. This maybe the start of the wet season. It’s 9.30 in the morning and the lack of light makes it feels like 4pm on a November day in the UK.

 

I said to Dave, it’s not really a sailing day. It’s a movie day he replied. I think we should remove the drain pipe that goes from the sink to the outside. It needs cleaning as it is starting to smell in the heat, was my response. His look said it all. It’s a pig of a job. Limited accessibility means skin removing positions to access the jubilee clips. Movies or pipe removal and cleaning? I wonder which will win out?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tried my hand at lizard repatriation.  We’d been out in the dinghy for an explore and returned to the boat to find two such creatures paddling like fury and trying unsuccessfully to climb up the convex hull of the boat. The current would sweep them back 5 meters or so then they’d summon up more energy for another unsuccessful assault to board Grace.

We watched this for a while thinking, what are these creatures doing out here?  We’re anchored maybe 500m from land. It seemed to be such a fruitless pursuit. I wasn’t in need of a boat pet and didn’t fancy waking up with a lizard on my head. (Another unpleasant way to wake up to add to my list).

These creatures seemed knackered. We managed to coax one up onto the paddle board and it sat quietly resting for a couple of minutes. Then it skittered speedily off the board across the water and onto the side of the dinghy. But Lenny the lizard only had one goal. Get onto the big boat. He was summarily back in the water scrabbling fruitlessly at the side of the hull. His mate had disappeared by this point.

I concocted a plan. I’ll get Lenny back on the paddle board and take him to shore. Off I set. Me in the dinghy and Lenny on the board, being towed at a fairly sedate pace. I called by our Belgium friend Jarne to see if he wanted a pet. His girlfriend sails a boat called Gecko. Could have been appropriate.

I was pootling along towards land watching Lenny. Paddle boarding wasn’t for him. He started legging it towards the front of the board, reached top speed then launched himself into the water. And so ended my lizard repatriation. He was big boy with a mind of his own. He’d be okay. Human intervention was not required. Even if it was well intentioned.

This wasn’t our only wildlife encounter recently. On our return trip from Panama City (we’re legal now with proper stamps in our passports) we had the most amazing journey. It was the full on David Attenborough experience. We saw several Bryde’s whales, a whale shark, two hammerhead sharks, manta rays, jumping rays, dolphins, a sword fish and all manner of birds. A was a superlative time. The waters were teeming with life.

That evening at anchor we shone a torch in the water and the water was thick and rich with krill. That may help to explain why there was so much wildlife around that day.

Finally a quick update on our movements. We’re currently cruising around the Las Perlas islands off Panama. More positive news is coming out of French Polynesia with no new cases of CV.  Negotiations are taking place regarding foreign flagged vessels getting into New Zealand and Australia later this year. So we’re pretty hopeful that the Pacific will still be on this year. It may be a very different journey to the one we originally envisaged. Staying positive (well trying to) and just waiting a little longer.

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.

 

 

I got round to taking a few shots today. It was bin day. High excitement. This meant a trip round to the next beach, all approved by the aero naval plus we got to walk up the beach to the rubbish truck. What joy. I never imagined that bin day would become something to look forward to.

So this is where we are and what it looks like. It’s not too shabby.

 

Friday night. The ‘‘nowhere to go’ fleet of boats in the anchorage tuned in for the  Dave and Helen pub-less quiz extravaganza. Number two in a series of who knows how many episodes.  There were 9 participating boats. Prizes were available. Pencils were at the ready. Glasses of wine and cans of beer adding brain food to the expectant participants.

It took us probably a good 6 or 7 hours to end up with something we were happy with. Is it too easy? Is it too hard? Is it multi national enough? Is there enough variety? We road-tested the bones of the quiz on a couple of folk via the internet in advance. One came back with a two word response to how hard it was. Nice bit of direct flavoursome feedback there. 😀 The other reckoned he got about 70% which meant we decided we were good to go.

We had a couple of rounds that related to our situation here. One round’s questions were all about countries we can’t sail to from here. Lockdown persists. Did you know that over 53,000 New Zealander’s stated their religion to be Jedi in their 2001 census?

We devised a couple of rounds where the answers were all connected. So if you got the connection, but didn’t know all the answers immediately, the connection may provide some help or least aid a guess. Our connection was names of boats in the anchorage. Boats call each other daily over the radio using names so the intel was out there. Or so we thought.

There’s a boat here called Gecko. The question being, what sub order of lizard includes the varieties crested, common leopard, and new caladonia giant. The boat’s owner didn’t get that one. They came in for a bit of stick in the scoring section.

And just to keep the quiz fanatics in line, one of the questions was “What colour is Helen’s toothbrush?’

We haven’t moved Grace for about 15 days. We’ve decided to see if / when / how the global situation develops in the next 2 to 3 weeks. In our time here, I haven’t worn shoes. I have been to the beach twice. Once to get rid of our rubbish and once to collect groceries from Henri. Steps on land maybe 500 in total. So it’s paddle boarding and bits of swimming and hull cleaning for exercise. Plus a friend in the UK sent me a programme of exercises that we just about have space for in the boat.

The sewing machine has been out. The generator has been serviced. We suffer from FSS (flat surface syndrome) on the boat. A friend introduced us to this. When you’re at anchor, any flat surface gets quickly covered in stuff. We are well into our second week of this and it shows no sign of abating.

So chums. Stay well. Be kind. We have some days when our mood is up and buoyant, others when the situation feels stifling and energy sapping. Our next big move. Who knows. We’ve spent hours debating  it without any obvious solution. Maybe inspiration and clarity will arrive one day.

I’ve hardly taken any pics lately. Must try harder.

 

 

What to write? After the excitement and drama of the Panama Canal, the world has turned on its axis, flipped a couple of times and ground to a shuddering halt in the last few days. If you’re musing, “ah, to be on a boat in a far flung place, how liberating’, isn’t an accurate portrayal of how things are for us. Let me explain a little of our situation.

Good friends on a kiwi boat left Panama just over two weeks ago. Society was still functioning ‘normally’ at that point in time. We’d imagined following in their wake a week or so later.  However…..

Countries all around have closed their borders. French Polynesia, where we’d planned to sail to, 4000 miles away is struggling with CV cases, limited medical services and in some places, dwindling general supplies so boats arriving after 4 to 5 weeks at sea are severely restricted in their movements.  And not really wanted either. Anchorages are filling up as boats arrive and freedoms no longer exist as the authorities implement quarantine procedures then want boats to move on, but to where?

Panama is now in quarantine. Essential journeys for food or pharmacies are allowed for a couple of hours a day, depending on the last digit on your passport / identity card.

We are safely anchored off an island about 35 miles south of Panama City. The island is small, with maybe 125 residents. Many have already left to return to the city. We have direct contact with the island administrator and she is both helpful and informative. Plus she speaks great English making up for my flagrantly inadequate Spanish. We are unable to go ashore other than to collect pre ordered grocery runs or to get rid of our rubbish.

There are maybe 20 boats here covering a real mix of nationalities…..Dutch, Brazilian, South African, Australian, French, Brits, Austrian, Belgium. An informal catch up each morning on the vhf radio allows folk to share knowledge of developing situations, both near and far, and ask for any specific help.

Skipper Dave has been doing a sterling job coordinating this conversation. The upside is most of the boats here know us now which may prove helpful down the line. I can’t say he’s enjoying doing it but his efforts are valued. And they also feel necessary to help and inform our current shared situation. And no one else is fighting him for the job!

 

Today’s plan (may change tomorrow, or next week to next month) is to sit tight and see how the situation develops. Current options for travel are pretty limited. We are however provisioned up for a Pacific crossing so probably have enough food on board for several months.

And boy are we glad of that water maker. Thanks Doreen. 😀

Make a mental note. It may only cost $0.25 cents for a bus journey in Panama City but don’t do it at going home time. A 20 minute ride home at 5.30pm turns into a crawling unpleasantness. So much so, that I’ve got the iPad out to fill the time and I’m starting tippy tappying Part Two of our Canal Transit.

So here we go….

Spencer slept in the cockpit and around 5am he dived down into the cabin as it had started to rain. Dave got up to close the hatches and my guess is everyone laid awake till it was time to get up around 6. The rain didn’t last long and soon the heat of the day started to build.

The pilot was due at 7am and Dave needed time for at least two cups of black coffee to be almost fully functioning and on the ball. Jorge arrived and hopped on around 7.15am, lines were dropped from the mooring buoy and we were off.

The first part of the day was motoring through the Gatun Lake. My main objective was to spot a crocodile. Melanie made a massive fruit salad and we settled down for chats, more tea and an easy start to the second day of transit with no immediate locks.

The lake is surrounded by rain forest. In fact the Smithsonian have a research centre just off the main channel. Container ships passed us at regular intervals till we reached a section called The Cut. Jorge advised us we needed to hang out on a mooring ball for around an hour as there is only space for one vessel at a time in this section.

Not content with manoeuvring Grace, looking after the crew and working with the pilot, Dave then disappeared down below to appear with plates of scrambled eggs and guacamole for everyone. We weren’t going to starve on this two day trip.

“There. By the two birds. Crocodile”. Bingo. Objective met. It was just hanging out. Partly beached. Partly in the water. The birds sat motionless in a teasing fashion, what looked like about a metre from the closed jaws. Perhaps not worth the effort of a little snap. That was me happy.

Then it was back to the serious business of descending the final three locks and exiting into the Pacific. Once again the plan was to nest the catamaran and two monohull together to make a raft. Thankfully Mrs Splosh wasn’t anywhere to be seen on the back of the catamaran.

This time, the raft was a much tighter unit. That was helpful. We needed to get into the lock and moored up before our ship arrived. Going up the locks, the big ship goes in first. Going down, the ship goes in second.

On day one, the wind had been on Grace’s side. It was tres important we got our lines on quick and tight before the wind could potentially push the whole raft across the lock towards the far lock wall. Today, the wind was on the side of the other yacht so they would have this responsibility. We were the more vulnerable boat.

As with day one, it was a learning experience. It wasn’t totally seamless but neither was it catastrophic. The wind did catch the raft and the even with engine running on the catamaran, we were blown at an angle towards the wall.

Spencer had tied a fender to the bowsprit in anticipation of perhaps needing one and I hurriedly got Melanie to take our line. A few quick paces and I was on the bow sprit with my roving fender and was able to squeeze it between the stainless steel guard rails and the jagged concrete wall. We ended up with a PCK, a Panama Canal Kiss on the very end of the wooden bowsprit. A small 3” burr etched on the wood but thankfully nothing was bent, no lights were broken proving a little foresight is a cost saving endeavour. There was little to do but react. A guy on the catamaran quietly said to me “well done”. I appreciated that.

That was the first of the three locks. After that it was straightforward. The last lock on the Miraflores side has a live webcam and several friends and family saw us pretty much perfectly execute the final lock. It was a bit of a shock to look up and see a whole gallery of people at the visitor’s centre stood watching. Not a time to stuff up!

And that was it, the final lock gates opened and we shot out into the Pacific. The fresh water in the lock travels quickly across the heavier lower salty sea water coming in meaning a fast exit.

We motored a couple of miles under the Bridge of the Americas and down to the anchorage at La Playita. The anchor wouldn’t set immediately and the windlass tripped but it didn’t matter. We were safely through.

 

 

 

 

Part One. It’s a bit longer than normal. Stay with it!