Portobello

The last morning in Shelter Bay was again busy. I ran the generator for a few hours to both condition the batteries and to make sure it was absolutely running smoothly. Normally I feel comfortable with the possibility of a generator failure as we usually maintain a high level of charge on the drive banks and therefore have some motoring reserve in addition to wind power. Enough to get us to safety if not into port. With the canal transit looming I wanted the satisfaction of a few hours running. It’s a little paranoid because we’ve had no issues and we motored ok to and from the Rosarios recently. We’d also come into the dock bow to on the advice of the dock master (given the tight squeeze I wouldn’t have want to come in stern to) which meant our power cable didn’t reach the outlet. The generator running allowed us some conditioning time on both the drive and house banks.

While doing this we managed a final wash, I sorted out the sail cloth from Florida, sorted out our credit cards which had both been blocked, sorted out Sam’s health insurance, paid the marina bill, cleaned the speed log, hoisted the Panama flag and performed a number of minor checks that had become due. The boat was in fine working order. The only item on my list of things to do that I did not accomplish was communicating with the Balboa Yacht club on the south (Pacific) side of the canal to learn about their slip/mooring availability and costs for our arrival.

Just before noon, after an early lunch, we left the marina. The wind had eased a little but was still blowing 10-15 knots. Fortunately it had shifted a little to the north but was still coming from the direction we wanted to travel.

For a while we were sailing on a decent tack around 6 knots. When it came to tack into wind I decided to motor about an hour out to sea to improve our angle and then sail the rest of the way to Portobello. By the time we again turned the wind had dropped some more and shifted back against us. Helen wasn’t pleased by this as she was feeling a little queasy so after plodding along for a while we again fired up the genset and motor-sailed the rest of the way.

Portobello was discovered by Colombus on his fourth and final trip to the Americas (the one which he returned to Spain in chains). Due to it being an excellent anchorage and having good access across the peninsular it was chosen to be the Caribbean end of the route the Spaniards hauled their South American plunder of silver and gold. We could see a number of old fortifications around us from the boat as dusk fell. We will explore these today.