First thing this morning, the restaurant we had reservations at for tonight canceled. Apparently they are in the process of moving the restaurant and won't be open till Jan 20. Now, you have to believe that last week when Melissa made the reservation they already knew that, right? Oh well...
Blog posts : "2014 Canal and Caribbean"
Ahhhh Spaaaa
We had figured that everyone would be moving slow today, so we had booked spa reservations for all the girls. Unfortunately Joan was totally under the weather, so Dave ended up taking her massage appointment at the hotel spa. We went there and hung out in the steam room and relaxed before our appo…
New Year's Eve in Panama City
As today is the last day of the year, Melissa wanted to see if she could buy the prescription medicines she uses and thereby make sure they ended up in a year where we have satisfied our medical insurance deductible. Four of the six things she was after were relatively easy to find. But the other …
Into the City
Yesterday Dave spent the day again helping folks with networking systems. Heart and Soul accidentally wired up their new extended WiFi receiver wrong and thought maybe they had blown it out. But MacGyver hooked it up to Apsaras and validated it was ok. Then he headed into town on the bus to h…
MacGyver adds to the karma kitty
The cruisers here have realized MacGyver knows a thing or two about radio systems. And he loves to fix stuff.
So Randy from Nirvana Now stopped by this morning looking for help with his AIS system. That's the thingy that lets you see the other ships around you on your navigation system. Randy…
Saturday Night BBQ
Apparently on Saturday nights here at the marina there is a BBQ. We had no idea till Dave from Heart and Soul dropped by and mentioned it about 5pm. BBQ starts at 6pm. Ok, better whip up some food, huh? So Melissa digs the last of the chicken breasts out of the freezer and marinates them in an o…
Navigation Equipment
Ok, here's another in the "how we do stuff" series of blog posts. Since we are sitting here in the marina with not a lot in the way of sailing stories to tell. Instead we thought it might be interesting to some folks to know a bit about how stuff works...
First, here is what the built in naviga…
Christmas in Shelter Bay
Christmas was a big potluck in the marina with a bunch of the local cruisers. First we started off on Manfred & Barb's boat - all 12 of us piled into the small cockpit for appetizers of salad and quiche.
Then Heart and Soul hosted the main course. They made the turkey and gravy. Dawn on Nirva…
Christmas Eve Insanity
Because we have just returned from almost a month in the San Blas Islands, provisions on the boat were super low. So Melissa headed into Colon on the marina shuttle to go to the grocery store. On Christmas Eve. The parking lot was gridlocked. As was the grocery store. Store employees were madly…
Safe and Sound back at Shelter Bay Marina
We left Portobello this morning headed back to Shelter Bay Marina. As we were pulling out of the bay, Dave yelled for Melissa to bring the camera as there was a sight you don't see every day. A Dockwise ship was moving a barge. That's what they do - move smaller ships and boats across the ocean. …
How I Blog
My cousin Marcie and her husband Dave are headed out next year on their own sailing venture. Today we had one of those "small world" moments when she emailed to tell me that she and her husband just bought Neko's sister ship Following Tides. There are only eleven Switch 51 Catamarans in existence…
First Book Published!
So Melissa's first book was published today! Hooray! Here' the description: "If you are a first time property manager this book is for you. It contains a ton of practical and easy to follow advice on everything from figuring out how much rent to charge to maximize your profits to how to adverti…
500th Blog Post
This is the 500th blog post Melissa has written since the start of this venture. Her first blog post was February 2013 when we had Apsaras inspected before purchase. She has blogged 86% of the 562 days since we left the dock in May 2013. At an average of 400 words per post, that's about 200,000 …
Nombre De Dios
The Turtle Cay Marina is just outside a town called Nombre De Dios. According to Wikipedia, "Nombre de Dios is the oldest continually populated town in the Americas. Originally a major port of call for the Spanish treasure fleet, Nombre de Dios was the most significant port for shipping in the A…
Where is Lionel?
Having been eaten alive by bugs at Nalia, we left there two days ago and went the short hop to the bay near Isla Porvenir. Feels like we are anchored in the middle of the ocean because you can see the swells crashing on the reef that protects this area, but that's really all that's around. Its not…
Nalia
This morning we reluctantly said goodbye to R&R Kedger and Neko who were headed north bound. We headed south to Carti. Its another relatively populated native Indian island.
Alas, when we arrived we discovered with the prevailing winds the water was choppy. And the two boats that were at anc…
Last night with Neko Fleet
This morning we headed to "the changing room" which is adjacent to "the swimming pool" and "the hot tub" anchorages. It was glassy smooth the whole way. Its a tropical paradise here.
After we arrived, Rob on R&R Kedger called to see if Dave and Pete would head over and help him go up the mast t…
Whole lot of nothing
We did pretty much nothing today. Melissa read her book, and Dave went snorkeling. Oh, and Dave along with the 3 other boats in Neko fleet burned their trash on the beach. Someone asked if any of us had kerosene to start the fire. No one had any till Dave pointed out kerosene is just a cleaner b…
Big Red Crabs
This morning we headed over to Green Island again, this time with R&R Kedger and Second Wind. Neko having stayed overnight there last night. Neko had reported that the anchorage had cleared out, so we figured there would be enough space for us to anchor properly here today. First thing as soon as…
Green Island
We decided to go over to Green Island today to do some snorkeling. When we got there we discovered the anchorage was very crowded. Took us two tries to settle into a spot where we weren't in danger of swinging into another boat. But it was in 30 feet of water and we could only put out 100 feet of…