8:37N 79:01W

 

Panama City was beginning to feel like Hotel California; the “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave” bit.  After successfully transiting the Panama Canal on February 21 we really only planned to spend a few days at the Las Playita anchorage, indulge in a final retail therapy session (the shopping in PC is fab!) and collect our two overdue parcels.  These were vital parts being flown in from the US and UK both on a 3-5 day service (yeah right), ordered at the beginning of February.  Tracking these down and actually collecting them proved so frustrating and time consuming we really began to think we would never leave PC.   It was very depressing to see other yachts that had transited after us leaving before us!

 

A trip to seedy Colon (not for the faint hearted) on Thursday produced one parcel – a breakthrough – and with the other promised to be at TNT Saturday morning the prospects of a departure looked good.   We were up early and headed into the amazing Abastos market where you can buy fresh produce at exceptionally cheap prices.  With endless stalls of pineapple, papaya, watermelon, mango, avocado, broccoli, zucchini, tomatoes, herbs etc we filled our backpacks and bags which I took back to Bandit (my final terrifying taxi ride...those drivers are crazy!) while David headed off to TNT to pick up our final parcel. Amazingly it was there and by 11am he was back on Bandit and we were ready to go.

 

Anchor up – well almost, we snagged a chain and it took a while to free that, then we were away.  We’d only motored a mile or so when the engine overheated – and both of us began to wonder whether we would ever leave.  With a nice breeze we opted to sail to let the engine cool down after which David discovered the impeller needed replacing- whew, a minor issue thank goodness.   We sailed on and saw two humpback whales and heaps of seabirds and were really just enjoying that wonderful feeling of being at sea again when the wind died and we had to motor.  The breeze freshened later in the day so we sailed right to the anchorage and saw yet another whale en route....magic.

 

We loved Panama City and made the most of our time there but were very much ready to go.  We’re now anchored in the Las Perlas islands, anxiously watching weather grib files and hope to be away in the next few days.