BOATBUMMS LOG: MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015/16

Lots of time has passed and lots of things have happened. I will not bore you with too many things but here are a few highlights of the last few months:

September 8^th we celebrated our 25^th Anniversary with renewing of our vows. It’s was a beautiful day and Owen did a good job even though he was not feeling well at the time. I can’t believe it’s been 25 years but then looking in the mirror I guess it could well be. Wrinkles of love!

Two

days after ours Jim and Melania’s had their 50^th, wow what a mile stone and those two love birds are still as madly in love with each other as when they met. I talked her into renewing vows as well so Owen had a busy schedule that week and he was feeling much better. They threw a big party with about 50 guests. Sid and I went to their house a day earlier so we could help them. It was an incredible party with Mariachi Band wonderful food, great music and lots of dancing.

You could not get me off the dance floor with all the great Salsa music. Jim and Melania are wonderful people and wonderful friends.

Melania has an orchid called Espiritu Santo, it’s the national flower. Look at it close you will see why it is called the Holy Spirit Orchid

Sure do miss the little Kia we had while living in the house the bus rides are more and more adventurous. In one week I had to use the busses 4 days in a row of which one broke down every day. It was funny though.

One inside on the floor

Two under the hood

Note the TV over bus driver. Yes it's very, very noisy boom boom music.

The busses to and from Puerto Lindo are getting fuller as time goes, sometimes it’s so full 3 people are hanging out the door. Sid said he’s never had so much ass in his whole life, of course all at eye level. He was lucky the other day that it was a young short girl with large boobs hanging out.

About big boobs and asses our friend Bill sent me some times photos of people of Walmart. I think this one is a Walmart shopper on vacation in Panama.

Here are a few photos of Pat’s BD pampering party. It was a blast:

Have you ever heard of a botfly, also known as warble, heel or gadflies and similar names. Teri Larvae are internal parasites of mammals, some species growing in the host’s flesh and others within the gut. The human botfly, is the only species of bot fly known to parasitize humans routinely, through other species of fly do cause myiasis in humans. Botflies deposit eggs on a host, or sometimes use an intermediate vector such as the common housefly, mosquitoes and species of ticks. The smaller fly is firmly held by the botfly female and rotated to a position where the botfly attaches some 30 eggs to the body under the wings. Larvae from the eggs, stimulated by the warmth and proximity of a large mammal host, drop onto its skin and burrow underneath. Intermediate vectors are often used since a number of animal hosts recognize the approach of a botfly and flee. Eggs are deposited on animal skin directly or the larvae hatch and drop from the eggs attached to the intermediate vector.

The human botfly occasionally uses humans to host its larvae. It takes 2 days to get through the skin either following a hair follicle or the sting, before they can suck on blood. At that time a blister will pop up on your skin, you scratch or pop it the larva has now air. It breaths through two air tubes and rapidly starts growing.

The larva because of its spines, can pose an extremely painful condition, Sid found out the hard way.

To remove it is almost impossible do to its spines. One time we squeezed so hard pieces came out but they were not the critter they were pieces of Sid's flesh.

We were told to put bacon on the bite or Vaseline to starve the parasite of air. We even saw a doctor that had "no" idea what it was and never seen it. He squeezed a little around it and made it worse. Later at home we finally squeezed it from below the bite with 4 fingers and OMG a lot of puss came out but healed fast after that. Here are a few photos pretty graphic so if you don’t want to see them scroll down fast and if you are interested click on photo to enlarge. We think he got the bite on our friend’s boat, who keeps getting these bites back and back again.

gone

The delivery Sid was going to do in June has still not happened andwe had several things waiting in Florida at our friend Jerry’shouse.

We hated to ask him to send it to us. Jerry even delivered it to Pakya near his home town. Thank you Jerry we really appreciate it. 4 days later we were in the possession of our new wind generator we had bought back in March. Sid was excited to install it but realized they did not send a very important part with it, the part that changes it from AC to DC. We tried to contact the seller via email or phones but nobody answering (Greenergy Star in Canada). We ran all over town to no avail and finally ordered it online not through the seller either. Another week later we received the part. The wind generator is installed and running so quietly we can’t hear it, how wonderful. By the way it’s a Greenergy Star 550W.

Occasionally I go to the local dive shop for a day to catch up on Internet stuff and enjoy one of Neven’s wonderful salads. I really scored last time, Nevy and Frank had diving guests from France and as Meals are included she hired a local girl for local cooking. That day she was preparing one of my favorites I always wanted to learn how to cook.

Pulpo Creollo:

After the octopus was cleaned she pounded each one of them with a wooden board. Then washed them.

After cutting them all into pieces she shredded two fresh coconuts
Added water to it and squeezed the milk out.

The octopus was boiled in water until it turned purple then water was poured off and she added enough coconut milk to cover it.

She cooked it for another hour and added all the seasonings to it.

Plus chopped up some onions, garlic, cilantro and small bell peppers and added it to the dish. The unfortunate thing I did not get to eat it but she did give me a little taster. Yum.

I definitely will cook that in the San Blas with conch. I’ll let you know how it came out.

Occasionally I visit our dentist Ida and spend the night there or we have a girls out and Sid stays on the boat fixing this and that. Her, her daughter Adriana and I went to Panama City for a movie and shopping and it can’t get any better than now having a Riba Smith at the new Centennial Mall, which has always been our favorite place to shop, it has everything there from Rey (grocery like Ralphs), Novys, Do it Center and Discovery Center (like a Low’s), Melo (pet store), Arrocha (best Pharmacy and house deco and kitchen stuff) and now Riba (High end grocery like whole foods but much bigger).

A display like this is pretty rare here in Panama, go Riba!

Only Riba has such a selection on import salamis ans sausages

This is only part of the bread isle the other has a bakery
plus more of this

This will eliminate having to drive through the whole town. Shopping will be done in ½ the time now, yeah!!!

Foodies got a face lift too:

Here I find such things as Rhubar, celery root and horsradish root

Then Ida took me to a store with nothing but chocolate and breads:

Noting but Baklava

Nothing but chocolate

Middle of November we were going to get ready for San Blas again when we received an email that the delivery was on for 1^st of December. So we waited and waited and waited and end of November we learned that it was postponed for the following year. So …………

The first week of November is one holiday after another 2^nd is Day of the dead, 3^rd independents day from Colombia, 4^th Flag day and 5^th Colon Day so pretty much the whole week all is closed. We don’t go to the festivities especially not to the Colon one as it is not the best place to be as a foreigner. But Pat took her granddaughter to the parade Look how cute she looks in her traditional costume

On the 10^th is “Primer Grito de Independencia de la Villa de los Santos” celebrating the uprising in the Villa del los Santos against Spain. And last November 28^th independence day from Spain.
Oh and by the way Mother’s Day here is celebrated on December 8^th! We hope to be in the San Blas by then. In 2000 the Saila (chief) of Nargana invited us to celebrate Mother’s Day with them and to invite all the other cruisers. That was fun. Would love to see if they still bbq the oxen for all the mothers.

Seemed like rainy season arrived on November 14^th. It started raining at 3 am until 11am with heavy to torrential downpours. Lightning was frightening and it still rained at 14:30. It was even for Paradise too much rain and well we found a few leaks inside the boat. The worst was water under the V-Berth mattress. Sid could not pin point where the leak came from and took the headliner down. What a mess.

First time mess, Yep it leaked twice

Dinghy filled twice in just a couple of hours

Lots of mud in the water

Add caption

Second time clean up, nowhere to sit

Even bathroom was occupied

Heavy rain came in under solar panels just good we have an umbrells

The whole boat was a mess for a while. But we hope the leak is fixed and so are the others. Work is never done on a boat it’s an ongoing thing.

Not long after that the base of our toilette broke. For those who don’t know anything about marine toilettes if that part brakes it’s kind of a shitty situation as what should be pumped over board part will seep out of the base into your bathroom. Not a good thing. Of course this part is not sold here so Sid ordered a new base ASAP and luckily same time found out steering cable questionable as well so he ordered both. Luckily both parts were available at Defenders. What great customer service they provide it’s really great, actually so wonderful we both said “to good to be true”. Well, we learned that they had to send it UPS as the steering cable can only be sent UPS. OK no problem but then after the great customer service UPS screwed up. They had Doral and a zip code for the Airbox address, minding you the 5 digit plus a -4 digit after that, what could go wrong. Well nothing if they would have addressed it Doral instead of Miami. We got the confirmation that it was delivered but no package was at Airbox in Doral. To make story short UPS had it delivered to a dock in Miami. So UPS had to go back and get it. 5 days later we get a surprise confirmation from our mail forwarding service in Key Largo that our package arrived. So after the second time UPS screwed up we are holding our breath hopping it will make it to Doral. Our mail forwarding service had a question about the zip code, she said there was no such zip code. Comes out there is two zips for that address they are in the transition to change Zip codes in that area or Flordia who knows. So “if” this package makes it here this week some time we can finally go provision and head to the San Blas.

In the mean time we missed Thanksgiving in the San Blas and our buddy boats in San Blas had Thanksgiving without a turkey. We did celebrate a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at Jim and Melania’s. As always Melania went all out and prepped so much food, I think she needs to get a bigger table. We had a wonderful time.

Now we are just waiting for the parts to arrive then we are out of here.

Let me catch you up on the marina since we are waiting for the package now:

I could write an incredible Soap Opera about Linton Bay Marina. The huge travel lift has been broken since it was put together which has been months and can’t be used. For 2 months they were waiting for the new part to fix it, part arrived but the Italian Mechanic can’t fly in until mid December. Jack Stands for hauling out boats have not arrived yet either, which we were told would be here in August as they were going to haul out in September. Neither do they have the wood blocks yet for under the keel. The haulout facility will not be ready for a while and yet boaters were told haulout will now start in October then November now they say December which we know is not gonna happen. All the boats already waiting they are lucky if in January I would say.

Since July we were supposed to have water and electricity and “Yipii” first of Novemer we finally got pressured water on the dock but still no power even though it’s all set up and ready to go. But then we all are sailboats and not power boats. There was a power boat in marina that was provided with power. They even organize fuel trucks for the power boaters but not for us. The dock master and crew are still missing in action we cruisers still run the marina and as a reward the marina fee went up from $ 10 per day to $9 per foot per months for mono hull and $ 12 per foot per months for catamarans. 40 foot minimum. For us it doesn’t change much but we do have to pay for 40 feet for out 36 foot boat so instead of 300 we now pay 360. Lots of charter boats have fled the marina as they don’t want to pay. The marina at one time was full with all 59 slips filled. Of which about 10 were cruising boats like us, the rest all Charter Boats and Back Packers (running Pack Packers from here to Cartagena and back). These boats had a heck of a deal all this time with 10 dollars a day for being a 50 plus foot boat.

It’s been an interesting and at times very frustrating time to be in this marina. I don’t think the investors know what really is going on as

Alan Beitel does not take to complaints other than “if you don’t like it you can leave”. No services are provided and several boaters told us that they overheard him yell at Adam with rules here: he does not want people living on their boats. No work done on their boats or on the dock (the dock part I understand). Nobody is allowed to park near the dock (they actually placed old canal rubber bumpers around a huge area and we have to carry everything heavy or not a long distance to the dock as they do not provide dock carts that roll on the muddy parking lot. And he ordered Adam to turn the water off!!! Wow this Alan guy has no problem taking our money but is refusing to give us just a little bit of a service.

I seriously believe none of the many investors know how badly he is treating his paying customers. They are all very well to do businessmen and any successful businessmen knows that if you want to run a successful business you have to provide customer service. Yes Alan, we hear you “if you don’t like it leave” it is time to go.

We really would like to see this marina succeed but not with an attitude like that.

They are getting already a bad rap in the cruising community and that alone is not a very good thing.

Paradise is all ready for Christmas and we are ready to cut the lines once the package is here. We both are wishing you a safe and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Besos Grandes
Sid and Manuela