June 30, 2007
Location: Bocas del Toro, Panama
Nautical Miles Traveled: 0
Wow, where did the month of June go? Time goes by so fast sometimes, can’t believe we haven’t done any updates this month. So what’s been happening with us this month? Lots.
David joined Aaron, Lyla, Gary and Dennis for three days of dive lessons and is now a certified PADI diver. He had a great time and now we can legally get our air tank filled. We have an air tank with 50’ of hose and a regulator, this helps quite a bit when we need to go down and clean the bottom of Bruadair or even for emergencies such as clearing the propeller, such as the case of getting garbage bags fouled on our prop in Puerto Cortez, Honduras.
The immigration law in Panama changed last month and effectively shortened the legal stay here from 180 days to 30 days, though an extension of 60 days could be granted if you could find a Panamanian sponsor. Having to leave the country every 30 days was not in our plans or budget so we’ve decided to make plans and head to Colombia in the middle of August. We can only hope the immigration law changes again, but this time for the better.
So with the new plan of departing Panama earlier than anticipated comes the need to stop procrastinating and get some of our projects done. We wired in a couple new 12 volt outlets to accommodate a fan and for a new spotlight (old one retired). I went up the mast last week and replaced our aging 3db VHF radio antenna with a new Gam S-2 6db antenna, reception is much better but transmission is still not as good as we would like. I suspect we’ll have to take the mast down and replace the 23 year old wires with new. Provisioning, navigation planning, ordering paper charts for Colombia are also taking up our time.
While in Colombia we are planning on doing a haul out so we can put on new antifouling paint on the bottom of Bruadair as well as change out the cutlass bearing, change two seacocks, repair a couple of blisters on the rudder and get an insurance survey done. Having been in contact with one of the boat yards in Cartagena, Colombia we’ve been advised that supplies there are very limited and in some cases nonexistent. So we’re hunting down bottom paint, sand paper and all the other things we need to get our refit done. While in Cartagena, but not necessarily out of the water, our other refit items include upgrading from the manual windlass to the electric windlass, full rigging inspection including possibly replacing it all, updating our charts (electronic and paper), have the boat washed and waxed and a lot of other little things.
David’s talked to a boater here that recently came from Cartagena who just had Corian counters put in their boat there. Colombia has their own knock off version of Corian that is supposed to be pretty good, and inexpensive. So David wants to look into that too. Derrick’s galley is about the same size as ours and it only cost him $500. Not sure that’s in the budget but the cook sure is interested (I have to keep the cook happy).
We’re also considering upgrading our chartplotter/radar. The JRC we’ve been using for the past four years is still working great, no complaints. But the C-Map NT+ card we use is out dated and only covers a small area. To get all the coverage from Ecuador to the South Pacific we would need to purchase about 12 chart cards at $225 each! C-Map has a new version of their charts out now called Max cards. For the same coverage we would only need to purchase two cards, at $200 each. Since the JRC doesn’t take Max cards it only makes sense to spend the extra money in an upgraded system than it does for the charts (my logic anyway). So we’re looking at the Northstar M121 with 2kw radome. We already have Northstar’s autopilot and wind/speed/depth instruments so the integration would be nice too.
So that’s if for June. Trying to stay in the country legally and planning for our trip to Colombia and budgeting for our refit.
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