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!