February/March 2025

Shelter Bay Marina is very near the Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal and so it’s the place where yachties converge to make their final preparations for the canal transit and Pacific crossing. Our arrival into the marina was greeted with much hurrah and celebration because the gang were together again -Ken and Eiloo on Antares II, Jack and Jan on US Anthem and of course Adrian and Marianna on Aussie Anthem. Shortly after, Dani and Al from Let’s Go arrived. 

Apart from being re-united with our cruising buddies, we were simply delighted beyond words that the timing of our arrival into Shelter Bay meant that we were on hand to welcome our good friend Eric Marsh, a competitor in the mini-Globe race, when he arrived after a 10 1/2 day passage from Antigua. The mini-Globe is a single handed 28,000 nm race around the world in the ALMA Class Globe 5.8 metre yacht. That’s just under twice the width of Paseafique! Very small boats.  It was an exciting time to be in Shelter Bay with all these little sailing boats and their skippers swapping stories of their passages and preparing for the next leg from Panama to the Marquesas. And in case you are wondering, these little boats were trucked to the Pacific side rather than going through the canal. 

Eric on Sun Bear arriving into Shelter Bay Marina on completion of the race leg from Antigua, and the three of us with the Hobsons Bay Yacht Club burgee – we met Eric through that yacht club

The majority of boats in the marina at this time of year are there to get match fit for a Pacific crossing. Consequently it’s alive with activity. Boats (including Paseafique) are being re-organised, cleared of surplus gear and cleaned ready to accommodate the huge influx of stores taken on board to not only sustain the crew on the initial (long) passage but also to somewhat mitigate the expense of provisioning in French Polynesia. Skippers, crew and the resident rigger can be seen aloft most days checking and re-checking the rigging and replacing parts as necessary. Charts are being updated and new navigation programs being taken up. Communication gear is being updated. Many people are adopting Starlink but some are de-activating theirs in protest and using other gear like Iridium (sat phone) or dusting off their HF radio sets. 

For our part, we didn’t really have many significant boat jobs on our list until one day when Phil had gone up the mast to do another job, he also had a good look over our relatively new rigging. He discovered to our horror that we had a broken wire on the cap shroud! Two years after it was replaced and it should last 7-10 years, or even longer. Many emails and photos were exchanged with the Greek rigging company (Waypoint Sails and Rigging) who had replaced our rigging in Preveza. They agreed to pay for the replacement under their two-year warranty but only the broken side. We decided to replace the other side also, on the advice of the rigger in Shelter Bay. Initially Waypoint wanted us to send the broken wire back to them for testing but they decided against it for expediency in settling the claim. I was just glad I didn’t have to arrange the shipping. 

The offending broken rigging wire

Fortunately, we did have a bit of time on our side before we were planning to transit the canal. So we engaged with Steve, the resident rigger at Shelter Bay, and he measured up for the new wire and placed the order with his supplier in Miami. 

We did the majority of our provisioning for the Pacific while based at Shelter Bay which meant many trips to different supermarkets to obtain all the basics plus some specialty items to add a touch of luxury, especially for the anticipated 4-week passage. It was a huge amount of food and drinks -more than we had ever taken on board before. 

Just some of the provisions from one of the shopping trips

Considerable re-organising was required to fit it all in. On one of these trips, we had shared a hire car with Adrian and Marianna to do a big shop at PriceSmart -which is like Costco. Phil didn’t come so as to create more room in the car for the purchases. So the three of us arrived to pick up the hire car. Normally Adrian is the driver, BUT neither he nor Marianna had the necessary documents to complete the car hire so it fell to me to not only be the name on the form, but to also be the driver!!!! On the wrong side of the road and into Panama itself!!!! What a nerve wracking couple of days it was as I drove us back and forth along shocking roads with limited or no lane marking. Even Adrian said it was one of the worst places he has “driven”. Thank goodness I had him as my co-pilot. 

We had decided to do the administration and organisation associated with a canal transit ourselves rather than hire an agent. It sounded fairly straightforward from what I had read and heard from others who had done it. So I logged into the small vessel system and filled out the required information about the boat and ourselves. Next step was to pay the AUD$5000 plus another $1000 for a bond. A friend of ours actually paid his in cash at the bank in Panama. He had to visit several ATMs to get enough cash -can you imagine carrying that much money around with you in Panama City! It took a bit of persistence to make our payment through my Wise account but eventually I had the receipt which then meant we could book a date with the scheduler. A simple phone call and we were slotted in for the date we requested. Other things we needed to do included arrange three line handlers (each yacht must have 4 line handlers plus skipper), hire the lines and fenders, and organise the food -more on that later. 

Enjoying ourselves

The communal industriousness of the marina is often punctuated by cries of joy when cruisers are unexpectedly re-united after long periods of not having seen each other. We caught up with Nick and Vicki from Amourka whom we first met in Greece where we discovered we had mutual friends. It really is a small world. Also Craig and Zena on Adriana II who we had hung out with for a while in Spain. Liz and Steve on Liberte, who had already transited the canal, drove over from the Panama City side for lunch with everyone. 

Of course all this work requires some play for balance, and the social life at Shelter Bay is well organised. BYO BBQ on Sunday nights, and happy hour on Wednesday nights plus the restaurant has pizza and ribs specials some evenings.  And there is always the pool in which to cool off at the end of a hot day. Our little group got into the routine of our own happy hour most evenings. 

Sunday night cruiser’s BBQ at Shelter Bay Marina

For our group, the time at Shelter Bay was soooo bitter sweet. Sweet in that we were all together and were working towards a common goal but we knew that all too soon, as each boat transited the canal, we would be heading in different directions or same direction but at different times. Ken and Eiloo would be going to the Gambier Islands and taking a slightly different route across the Pacific on their way back to Singapore. The three Aussie boats would be all on their way back to Australia -Dani and Al to Tasmania, and Adrian and Marianna to NSW, both in the one season. We would also be on our way back to Australia but in two or three seasons. Jack and Jan were staying in the Atlantic as they had already been across the Pacific and around, and were contemplating buying a house in the US and splitting their time between land and sea. 

As we had time up our sleeves and had to wait for the rigging wire to arrive, we decided we would take a trip to the San Blas Islands, to the east. By the time we would return to Shelter Bay, all of our group would have departed, except maybe Jack and Jan who still had some repairs to do. So the night before we left, we had our last group dinner at the cruisers BBQ. It was so hard saying goodbye to our friends with whom we had shared so much of our lives over the past 10 years. Although we would certainly be seeing some of them again, this was the end of our cruising time together. It makes me cry just to write these words. Cruising together creates such a close bond as you share the triumph of a great passage, the misery of a bad one, trouble shoot each others’ boat problems, share hopes and aspirations, support each other through difficult personal challenges, and generally shoot the breeze with each other. How very fortunate we have been to have found these wonderful souls. It will be very, very hard to let go of that rich aspect of the cruising life when the time comes.

All the gang at our farewell BBQ