Boat Cleaning and Trip to Colon

Today was another busy one. We started the day scrubbing the entire deck removing the last of the Cartagena grime. Around mid morning the admeasurer arrived to measure the length of Dignity and fill out the paperwork for our crossing. Later in the morning our agent, Enrique Plummer, arrived to collect our passports and boat papers to handle our immigration, clearance and canal booking.

There are a lot of so called agents who will help out for various fees. Enrique has a solid reputation and is consequently not the cheapest by far. Regardless, we felt in very safe hands.

I went into Colon with Enqrique for a couple of reasons. The first was to draw some cash from Citibank and the second to take our sail to the sail maker to see if it could be repaired.

I forgot the mention in yesterday’s blog that the trip from Shelter Bay to Colon takes about 45 min. Partly due to the distance and partly due to the fact that the road passes in front of the first of the Gatun locks which is invariably closed as ships need to pass through.

This time I remembered to bring my pocket camera to capture a few shots.

When we reached the port area the Citibank was opposite the port office so while Enrique handled the formalities, I went in to get the cash to pay him. I wanted to get cash to avoid paying the extra 5% credit card fee. Although the “Citibank” here looked like a Citibank and had the same logo it turned out I could only withdraw cash if I had a local account. What a load of b**l**cks. They didn’t even have an ATM to use. I was sent to the HSBC up the road who did have a cash machine. I duly went there, waited ages in line to have access to the machine and was refused on all my cards.

I explained the situation to Enqrique getting a little worried as both my credit cards had been refused the previous day at the supermarket. This is not atypical as there are many reasons a card won’t be accepted and only sometimes is it due to their being a block on the card. We decided to try another ATM in a nearby mall and have lunch there. This ATM was out of service. Reluctantly I tried one of my cards on Enrique’s portable machine and fortunately it worked. (I have since learned my one other card is in fact blocked which I can hopefully resolve today before we leave here)

In between all this we visited the sail maker. He felt the sail can be repaired for a modest fee if only we can provide the cloth. Enrique was happy to be go between and receive cloth sent from the US, get it to the sail maker and eventually collect the repaired sail and get it back to us at one end of the canal or the other based on timing.

After our late lunch Enrique dropped me off at the mall up the road which turned out to be the same mall we visited the day before. I tried the ATM there and was able to withdraw some cash. I’d withdrawn cash the previous day but had had to use it when my cards were declined so it was a relief to be able to get some more before we head off to the San Blas.

I caught the Shelter Bay bus back to the marina and bumped into Peter and Penny again from InnForAPenny II.

Back on the boat Helen was exhausted having completed the boat clean while I was running around Colon. We rested for a short while before Peter and Penny showed up with a jug of fruit punch. We spent a couple of hours around the boat before separating for evening meal and sleep.

The winds appear to have died down a little and the forecasts reflect this. We’ll be out of here today once we’ve sorted out the sail cloth, the blocked card, some preventative maintenance and a few other odds and sods.

Important note for close blog watchers: We’ve settle on our date for the canal crossing. We’ll be uplocking on Sunday January the 10^th, staying the night on the lake then downlocking on the 11^th. The precise time of our transit will not be known until much closer to the time. However, I know we will be uplocking the Gatun lock sometime (probably a few hours) after 16:00 local time, that’s 21:00GMT but no earlier. The very earliest we will downlock the Miaflores lock will be 13:00 local time, that’s 18:00GMT. If you have nothing better to do you can watch us go through the canal on the webcams at http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html

I will try my best to provide more precise timing if/when I can.