Pitufa.at

In the bay south of Contadora where we’re anchored now we get daily entertainment: in the mornings and in the afternoons big schools of stingrays (medium sized devil rays) round up shoals of small fish and then a special spectacle starts: first the tips of their wings are visible on the surface, then the water seems to boil when the small fish are herded to the surface and finally the rays start jumping out of the water in a feeding frenzy. The jump up to 2 metres high, flap their wings frantically (imitating the pelicans??) and then splash back either in a bellyflop or after doing a somersault. Sometimes 5 or 6 jump at the same time–like a dolphin show, only with stingrays

I spent the morning on deck trying to get some of the stunts on photos and managed to take some pics of them (they will follow soon in a photo gallery). The rest of the day we spent patching up dingsi our faithful dinghy and mounting the last solar panel in its new place (after buying two bigger ones for the radar arch we had to rearrange all the other ones…) and changing the oil on the outboard.

Yesterday Roswitha left us again, she took the ferry from Contadora back to Panama City (quite an adventerous device, ferry guests have to wade into the sea, climb on a boat which then takes them out to the ferry ) and is now sitting on the plane to New York, then on to Frankfurt and then follows yet another flight to Salzburg… We had a great week with her in the Perlas: swimming, snorkeling, exploring beaches–having a guest onboard made us realise again how nice life on a boat can be
Roswitha, thanks again for all the spare parts, presents and for being such a flexible, helpful and cheerful (despite uncomfortable rolly nights) crew member!

The last few days we’ve been terribly busy mounting new solar panels, running through chandleries, buying provisioning–something seems to be weird with the time in Panama, it flies by and the days are never long enough for everything we want to do.
Today Christian’s sister arrived and we have a good excuse to have a break and spend some days off swimming (last time we went swimming was in the San Blas at the beginning of November…), snorkeling and relaxing. We’ll head to Taboga (a little island near Panama City) tomorrow and then on to the Las Perlas archipelago.

This year we didn’t get into a christmassy mood at all–Panama’s just too tropical for our associations of snow, red noses and stiff half-frozen fingers holding on to mugs of mulled wine…
We’ll make an effort today by baking Christmas cookies, if that doesn’t help we’ll start singing carols
We’ll spend a quiet Christmas eve aboard Pitufa, and maybe it’ll be cool enough in the evening for some mulled wine.

Merry Christmas to everybody out there travelling along with us on our blog!

Today we ventured into Panama City for the first time and even though our quest for an evaporator (for the fridge) and electronic parts lead us to the non-touristy, less pretty parts of the city we’ve decided that we like it here. The bus system is very convenient (you have the choice between comfortable but awfully cold metro buses and loud, packed old schoolbuses) and fortunately Panama City is considered safe for tourists and so we had the chance to wandered through posh residential areas, buzzing streets with elderly, slightly run down houses and plenty of litte shops, broad avenidas with flashy skyscrapers and big shopping malls–the contrast between areas in the same neighbourhood is really interesting.

Going through the Panama canal is quite a complicated procedure. First every boat needs 4 lines 125 feet long and as many tires as possible (as fenders). Then 4 linehandlers have to be on each boat (usually fellow cruisers) + the skipper. Our linehandlers from “Zenna” and “Tagtraeumer” will arrive tomorrow in the afternoon at Club Nautico. We’ll then go over to the Flats anchorage, where an “advisor” from the canal authority will come on board. We’ll then proceed to the Gatun locks, where the boat will be lifted up going through 3 locks in a row. Yachts go with big ships into the lock, they can either tie up to the wall (risky in the violent current and eddies), tie to a tug (quite a hazzle) or go “center lock” (either alone tied up in the middle of the lock with four lines, or in a packet with another yacht). We’ve chosen the last version and will be going with another yacht center lock.

We’ll arrive in the Gatun lake at night, spend a night anchoring there and then at 6 o’clock in the morning another advisor will come aboard (hopefully on time). We’ll rush full speed over the lake (about 4 hours), descend through another set of locks (Miraflores) down to the Pacific. If you’re interested you can take a look at us through the webcams at Miraflores (around noon here, late afternoon in Central Europe) at

http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html

Sounds simple? Let’s hope everything works out fine!!!

At least for us just about everything’s complicated and a pain in Panama. Today it started pouring down as soon as we started filling up our diesel tanks (very convenient), then we discovered that our cruising permit (valid 1 year, costs 200 usd) accidentally got into the papers the port captain in Portobelo took from us on arrival there. We desperately made phone calls until noon, but the port captain is on vacation, nobody’s authorised to look into the papers etc.. We tried to explain all that to the secretary at the maritime authority in Colon, trying to persuade her to phone in Puerto Obaldia where we bought the permit in the first place. Her answer was that nobody had the number of the office there, so in the end we had to pay for another cruising permit. We spent 3 hours in the office watching her swearing and muttering, she finally typed our (one page) form (ten items to enter) on the computer, shouted at me when she discovered that we were NOT from Australia (she had to type it again), the printer didn’t work, she got out a typewriter and then charged us 20 usd extra, because of overtime (after 4 o’clock…).

The rain didn’t stop all day, half of Colon was under water, cars with bow waves like ships everywhere… We did some grocery shopping, returned to the boat with dripping wet bags and can’t wait to get away from here!