Sunrise on Sunday February 23
When we arrived in Shelter Bay Marina on January 19th, we’d expected to move on in the first few days of February. However, the weather has been uncooperative, so we’ve stayed about 3-weeks longer than anticipated. We were happy to see that the weather was finally cooperating and we could leave on Tuesday in the very early morning.
The majority of Sunday was spent getting Kosmos ready to go to sea. Since we’d been at Shelter Bay so long, we’d unpacked a lot of items from the assorted deep, difficult to access storage spaces. Getting it all put away was a Jenga game, as everything needed to be carefully packed so it wouldn’t shift when the boat was rocking.
Eric also led a kids’ D & D session. In the evening, Christi and Eric went for a walk in the jungle, following the road to Gatun Bridge for about 3/4 mile, until we got to a small bridge over a stream. Unfortunately, there was no walkway for part of the bridge, and being a blind curve, we decided it best to not walk in the road. We turned around and went back to the marina. The expanse between the T-intersection and the bridge where we turned around was mostly jungle.
Monday was more eventful. In the morning, we went to immigration to check out of the country. Since we didn’t want to go to Colon to do the checkout paperwork ourselves, we’d paid our agent to do the majority of the check-out paperwork on our behalf, but we were required to go to immigration in person. Conveniently enough, the immigration office was in a little bungalow steps away from the marina office. The boat yard wrapped around the discreet building.
We continued getting Kosmos ready to go to sea. One of the things that we like to do when we are in a marina with unlimited water is to flush out the sink with the hose right before we depart. We’ve found that when we are on a long passage, the heat from the engine emanates up to the pipes under the kitchen sink. Any food particles in the pipes start to seriously stink. The sink flushes help to keep odors down. Usually, lots of tiny bits of food come out. This time, a big clump came out – we think we may have had a clog building! We were relieved to have gotten that clog out – what if the plumbing had backed up while we were at sea?
We took the 1300 shuttle to the El Rey Sol center to get pizza and gelato again. We bought extra pizza for the passage. We also stopped by Rume for cookies and more bread, and a bakery called Tonos, where we bought cookies and empenadas. We find bread products to be the easiest to digest when seas are not good, so we try to have a lot of easy to eat bread products onboard.
Keith spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool with his friends. Eric joined him once Kosmos was as ready to go as possible (there were still a lot of last minute things to do). Christi went for one last walk on the loop, moving slowly and trying to fully appreciate the various bird calls and other animal noises for the last time (the Howler monkeys were quiet).
Since our kitchen was all buttoned up, we went to the marina restaurant for dinner. Eric and Christi have decided that the best thing on the menu is the passionfruit ceviche, which is marinated in a passionfruit/lime combo instead of just lime. It’s served with plantain chips instead of regular chips.
Service was slow, so we got to bed a lot later than planned.