Still in Panama

The best news of all is that our son-in-law, Ben, returned to work after Easter and also started his leisure activities again, such as racing dinghies and horse riding. Thank you to everybody who prayed for him or held him in their thoughts. It was a great support to know so many people cared.

We have had some success resolving our mechanical problems. Frederico, our taxi driver was great. He found an engineering workshop for us the day after we arrived in La Playitas and three days later he collected the refabricated coupling and delivered it to the marina. It fitted on the propeller shaft and both forward and reverse gears operated at very low revs. Unfortunately, the prop shaft was bent. We looked at the four options open to us for being lifted out, but only one was viable, so we booked to be hauled out at Balboa Yacht Club on 26th April, which was 3 weeks away.

Meanwhile, all the other outer boats left the anchorage leaving us isolated and at the mercy of passing pilot boats and all the Panama Canal traffic, which created lots of wash. One calm morning, we tied the dinghy alongside and used its 2.5hp outboard engine to move us very slowly towards the distant anchored boats. I was able to use reverse gear on Sal Darago to stop us and we dropped the anchor in a safer place. Here we stayed for a week, during which an out of season southerly swell came in and lifted the anchor on an old schooner. Within minutes she dragged towards us. We thought she was going to hit us but her anchor held her just alongside. The owner was ashore at the time. I tried to get some help by calling fellow cruisers on our VHF channel 74. There was no response. I called the marina and they alerted the coastguard and the signal station for the Canal. No-one came and as the wind rose the schooner started dragging again towards two yachts and the rocky shore beyond, which had surf breaking on it big enough for serious surfboarders to ride. The skippers of Clara Katherine and Arctic joined us aboard the errant schooner and soon the stern anchor was removed from its locker and deployed as a second bow anchor, which held the boat until the owner returned. How vulnerable are the engineless!

We needed a tow to take us 3 miles to Balboa Yacht Club. A Briton in a fishing boat was able to oblige. We are now secured to a mooring buoy waiting to be hauled out on Monday. We are quite close to the Bridge of the Americas and adjacent to the shipping channel for the Canal. Free water taxis pick us up when we want to go ashore where there are hot showers, a laundry, a restaurant and a bar. We can walk into Balboa or we can take a bus into Panama City. We have been told that there are engineering workshops that can make a new prop shaft for us so we are in a much better position now. Obviously, there are worries about whether there is more damage and will there be problems removing and then replacing everything? We’ll let you know.