Saturday 17 December – busy day in the marina

The satellite guys arrived at 7:30am without warning which was a bit of a shock. We had delayed John coming to fix the washing until 9am, a more comfortable Gormley start time! For our crossing the Pacific with the Arc we had to upgrade our satellite system, Rowan bought the whole new Gizmo with a Panama City crowd, Rowan told them we were available as we are now based at the marina for a while, and they came over promptly! Two guys who couldn’t speak English worked incredibly hard all day, getting cables from the helm to the desk in the saloon. They joined us for a full English breakfast which I am sure was pretty novel for them.

John arrived at 9am and the antics with the washing machine started. He quickly established the machine is sound which is a relief. They discovered that the outlet was not where we were told and was just above the water line, which explained why it wouldn’t work under passage, as water was travelling up the outlet pipe. It appears there was a blockage too. It all seems to be working fine now, now we have to establish with Catana where we can put the outlet pipe so it works under passage. We are learning loads, like never to rely on shore power to run motors and pumps as there is always too much fluctuation in the power supply. From now on we will only run the washing machine with our generator and the dishwasher can run off our lithium batteries no problem. We will just use shore power to top up our batteries. Boring for some of you, but I’m really just writing this to remind myself!

Steve an eccentric looking S African chap, with a long flowing white beard tied up with colourful beads, came over to teach Rowan how to service our winches. He has been living here on a boat for 11 years, now he has a Panamanian passport and work visa.

We were ready for an early night, with the luxury of entering our beautifully chilled hull. We don’t run the air con overnight, it just makes it cool enough for falling asleep and our little ceiling fans whirr away all night keeping us just cool enough and keep the mozzies at bay.