A little manual labour ... for Jens, a labour of love!

So, we have spent the first couple of days in Panama City, hanging at Fredrik's condo in the sky.  Not so bad; in fact it has been downright comfy.  Anna and Christian were up before dawn two days in a row eager to see as many of the city's sites as possible - up to Ancon hill to catch the sunrise - off to the national park to see the wildlife.  Oh, the energy these young people have.  In the meantime, Jens and I were dashing around the city picking up lacquer for the trim and hunting down new filters for the watermaker.  We made a quick trip to Shelter Bay to have a glimpse of Segwun and to watch her being moved from the secure yard to an area where we could have access to start the work.

After two days of sightseeing, Anna and Christian were whisked away with us to the marina on Thursday morning where we started the job of sanding the bottom of the boat.  For the non boaters out there, our boat has a fiberglass hull and the portion of the boat that is below the level of the water is painted with an antifouling paint.  Actually, regardless of the material, all boats are painted with antifouling paint.  This is a paint designed to discourage barnacles, weeds and other marine animals and plants from clinging to the hull.  This is important as a non-smooth bottom would severely slow us down while at sail and if left too long would corrode the boat.  Before repainting Segwun's bottom, we had to sand it to rough it up a bit and take off any loose bits.  This turned out to be a very messy job as the picture below will prove.  But we were done by noon and had to shower before we could do anything else.  After a good shower, swim in the pool and a little lunch, we started polishing the sides above the water line.  Ah, but it was not to be.  It is still the rainy season here so we were quickly interrupted with a heavy rain which continued for the next hour or two.   We decided to call it a day and head back to Panama City and our home in the sky.

Anna, Christian and Jens in front of Segwun, covered in the paint dust from sanding.  

We came back across to Shelter Bay early this morning to continue the work of polishing even though it was raining pretty heavily when we left Panama City.  It rained most of the way there, but luckily cleared up just as we arrived and we managed to get the boat nicely polished before lunch.  She's starting to look really good.  Tomorrow morning we start painting and I'll take a picture of her once she's freshly painted so you can see the hard work we have been doing.

A quick geography lesson for you :  Panama is a country on a fairly narrow strip of land and it is about 80 kilometres from the Caribbean sea to the Pacific Ocean.  Segwun is at Shelter Bay Marina which is on the Caribbean side, near the city of Colon.  We are currently staying with Fredrik who has a lovely condo on the 26th floor with a fabulous view of the Pacific Ocean in Panama City.  It takes us about 1.15 hours to go from point to point, not accounting for the traffic, which in Panama City is like in any large city - pretty miserable during rush hour!!

Segwun is scheduled to go back into the water early Monday morning.  Fingers crossed!

Season Two is About to Begin

We left Segwun on the hard at Shelter Bay Marina and traveled from Panama City on the 30th of May heading first to Sweden and Denmark before stopping in Canada during our break.  My last post was just after our visit to Denmark in the middle of June.

Since then, we have been at our cottage in Canada for the past 71 days and have enjoyed a fantastic Muskoka summer.  We hosted more than 36 overnight guests which meant a lot of trips to the grocery store and the LCBO, a very busy kitchen and BBQ and our coffee maker working double overtime.  Not to mention the piles of laundry, bed making, vacuuming and so on.  But all of this is overshadowed with the fun and good times we had.  It was so wonderful to have the chance to share a few good dinners and sometimes a few too many drinks with family and friends.

It was a spectacular summer weather wise - hot and sunny with very little rain.  The only downfall of that was the fire ban that was imposed on us so we missed our usual late nights around the camp fire for a couple of weeks.  But we made up for it with music on the deck.  Thanks to Jaan we heard some brilliant jazz on the saxophone; Michael chipped in with one of my favourites on the bagpipes (Amazing Grace) and we ended our season with a little Hotel California on the guitar by Christian.

Anna and Christian (Jens' daughter and her boyfriend) have both just graduated and are taking a year's sabbatical.  After a visit to the US West Coast, they joined us in Canada at the end of July and have travelled with us to Panama.  They will come along sailing with us as we travel down to Ecuador and Galapagos.  So we now have two new crew members!

After a few tearful good-byes, a last dip in the lake and one last evening around the fire it was time to pack up the spare parts we purchased, a few books, a printer for the boat and our clothes and head to the airport for the flight back to Panama City.

We are now guests of Fredrik, a Tetra Pak colleague who is based in Panama City.  He has an apartment on the 26th floor with an awesome view of the city and offered us to stay with him for a few days.  Seeing a friendly face at the airport on arrival to Panama made the trip so much nicer.  Jens and I will spend the next few days getting things organized while Anna and Christian do a bit of sight seeing before we head to Shelter Bay and back to SY Segwun.  This time, Fredrik has promised to come along to see our boat and go for a sail.

So, the big question - what are our plans from here?  I hesitate to be too specific as we have really embraced the idea that we will go where we want when the winds are right and when we have spent enough time where we currently are.  No more pressure to sail against the wind and in bad weather.  The big picture plan is to visit San Blas, traverse through the canal to the Pacific, make our way down to Ecuador and Galapagos and then across the Pacific to French Polynesia.   Stay tuned - season two is about to begin!