Bunch of Bankers! (Panama)

 

I found out today that during the War of Jenkins Ear (yes…it’s a real thing!), Portobelo was attacked by the British.. and the song ‘Rule Brittania’ was supposedly written to celebrate the victory. Well I never! There’s a lot more fascinating history to that place, worth a Google at some stage if you’re interested.

Upped anchor and left there, making our way the 20 miles or so to the canal entrance under sail. Sea was a bit sloppy on the way, but nothing that we’re not used to by now. There’s large freight ships galore milling around the entrance. We wiggle our way through - sailing all the way - and radio in to Shelter Bay Marina.

It’s a little windy as Chez steers us in to our marina berth… something which we’ve avoided for the last year, preferring to stay on anchor.

As marinas go, it’s not a bad one: free local bus to supermarkets, a swimming pool, helpful smiling staff and a half decent restaurant. We dine there on our first night, gorging ourselves on a selection of deep fried bits and bobs.

I service the engine the next morning, finding a couple of concerning items: the impeller that draws cooling seawater into the engine has partially broken, and the diesel filter was very dirty..

I managed to track down the broken impeller fins, and cleaned up the diesel filter - this should keep us chugging along for a while longer.

Did a couple of supermarket runs using the marina’s free bus. They’re good ones, the poorly stocked Caribbean supermarkets now slowly fading from our memory.

We then spent a few days pottering around the boat and marina, awaiting the arrival of an ‘Admeasurer’. This is a canal official who confirms the length of your boat and its suitability to transit the canal.

He eventually arrived. Nice enough guy, but no sign of a tape measure, he did however manage to sink two of our beers while he slowly filled out his paperwork!

We met up with Lynda and Keith again from Itiki, they’re heading through the canal before us.

They’ll be rafted up next to some more new friends for the transit: Ollie and Beck - a fun English pair on another catamaran.

Had a nice dinner out with all of them at the marina restaurant. I once again opted for a plate of deep fried food: chicken wings, calamari, mozzarella sticks and jalapeño poppers, yum.

Life is good.. but current minor frustrations are mounting up a bit, the forefront of which is our bank back in Australia still playing silly buggers and pretending to not know who I am.

I’ve been jumping through the ludicrous hoops they’ve put in front of me:

-printing out a copy of my passport

-finding a local public notary to sign my passport..

-going to DHL and FedEx to send it, only to be asked for $140USD to send the letter back to Aus.

That’s far too much, so thinking I’ll instead use the post office, I took a taxi into Colon and came across a very unexpected roadblock:

“Letter to USA or Europe, Si… but letter to Australia and Africa, no sénor, we no send to those places”.

Utterly exasperated, I then got back in touch with the bank via email and then phone to explain the situation. This time with the support of the local branch manager in Sydney (nice guy called Matt) who offered to vouch for me. This however wasn’t sufficient for the ‘computer says no’ operator with whom I was dealing. She, oh so politely, advised me all my accounts will still be locked in 30 days unless I visit a branch.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!