Thursday, January 16 — This morning, we untied and traversed the few hundred feet over to the fuel dock, which was located directly underneath the marina office.
Fueling up was uneventful. We took on 750 gallons at $3.54 per gallon, then returned to our slip. This fuel dock is unusually high.
On Wednesday, January 15, the full moon was still shining brightly at dawn.
After our morning chores, we caught a taxi to take us to the Panama Canal Museum, located in a neighborhood called Casco Viejo, which is the oldest part of Panama City. The building that is now the Panama Canal Museum was originally built as a hotel. When the French began building the canal, they bought the hotel and turned it into their headquarters, so it is a fitting location for the museum.
Monday, January 13 was a quiet day. We did school and chores in the morning, and more chores in the afternoon. We didn’t venture out until dinner time.
This time we walked farther down the causeway, to the restaurant at Flamenco Marina, which was about 1.5 miles away. It was a gourmet food court with a fancy bar in the middle, and Eric was eager to give it a try.
Sunrise on Sunday, January 12
We spent the morning doing boat chores. At around 1000, Eric went up to the marina office and saw three raccoon-like creatures in the parking lot!
At about 1215, we headed out to lunch. There were three people standing under a tree in the parking lot, looking intensely up at something. Eric and Keith kept walking, but Christi stopped to see what they were looking at. It was a sloth!
Continue readingContinued from yesterday… At 0400, we approached the anchorage for the large boats coming from/going to the Panama Canal. We could have done circles for two hours until dawn broke, but since the ships were not moving, were lit, and all had AIS, we were confident that we could navigate safely.
Even though there was plenty of space for us to navigate between the vessels, we still felt quite close to the monstrous ships that we passed.
A couple small pangas came really close to us during the twilight approach to the marina. At one point dinghy zoomed across our the bow so close that it made our hearts skip a beat. Here is a photo looking back at the large vessel anchorage as dawn broke.
