header photo

Melissa & Dave - Adventures at Sea

Ready to go home

It poured down rain yesterday evening. No lightning nearby, though. Dave slept great. Nice to be back in his own bed (for those that don’t remember we put our good sleep number mattress on the boat before we left Seattle). Got up at 8 when the marina came and picked up the loaner dehumidifier that has keep the inside of the boat dry this past year.

Dave cleaned out the dinghy stashing everything below. Tied the dingy down. Poor thing – looks awful all deflated. Then he went up to the restaurant and had breakfast. He had forgotten how expensive it is here. $12 for juice, eggs, bacon and hash browns. The waitress first brought out a check for $8 then said, oh yes, the orange juice – that will be $12 without ringing it up again. Likely she pocketed the $4.

Dave talked to the customs agent Enrique again around noon. Sounds like Dave will get cleared out tomorrow morning starting at 9:00 and be loading the boat around noon. Dave relayed this to Melissa and she decided to book Dave tickets to come home Wednesday and a reservation at Panama Hat Tuesday night. We can always change them Tuesday if loading gets delayed.

Dave pittered around in the boat most of the afternoon having gotten most of the work done yesterday. He hooked up the VHF and AIS.  He had disconnected it all while were gone to save them from lightning. The antenna is on top of the mast so even a close hit is likely to fry anything attached. He then downloaded navigation software that lets him track the freighter and figured out how to get snapshots of bay. He doesn’t have any charts with him so he figured a Google Earth chart would suffice. Now he can see all the ships geo-referenced to a Google Earth image.

The GE2KAP navigation system has gotten pretty outdated. It requires an ancient version of Google Earth and is very fussy about the setup. Dave figures he could make a java thingy that does a better job getting tiles from Google Maps but doesn’t have time to mess about with it.

The red boat on the upper left is Apsaras. The blue line coming down the screen is Dave’s predicted path of the freighter. All of the green triangles are other ships. Dave should see our freighter the AAL Dalian come into range later this evening. The last he checked on her, she was about 175 nautical miles away and due in port around midnight. Here is a zoomed out view of the tracking of Dalian on marinetraffic.com since she rounded Cuba heading SW towards Panama.

Dave tested the engine again by leaving the battery charger off (just solar) all day. Started up just fine. So he figures we are good to go without buying another starter battery. Melissa pointed out that we can just bring one with us when we pick up the boat in Canada if we really want the redundancy.

Dave went up to the store around 3:45 to get something for dinner before they close at 4:00. As he was walking down the dock, he could see her locking up and leaving. Oh well, he figures he will dig around and see what canned goods we have on board.

Enrique called again around 4:00. He is on his way to do the final paperwork. He got here an hour late (back on island time).   When Enrique arrived, he and Dave went over all the paper work. The plan is that the AAL Dalian will anchor inside the seawall and Enrique will give me a call when to approach the ship. That means he has about a 2-mile cruise tomorrow – he doesn’t have to go all the way over to the docks of Colon. He expects to load around noon. The freighter’s only purpose is to drop two boats and pick up ours so it should be a quick exchange. Dave likes the fact that he will be approaching a ship at anchor because the winds will be easier to deal with. He will meet Dave there in the launch and take him back to the marina once loaded.

Here is the receipt Enrique gave Dave.  In the end it wasn’t clear whether he actually obtained the cruising permit nor the Zarpe (departure paperwork).  Canada and US don’t require any of that for entry of US flagged ships.  So the reality is that Enrique could have just pocketed all that money.  And as for the customs agents who were supposed to come aboard the freighter – for which we paid $500 for their inspection – no one ever showed up.  So who knows whether that money was used to grease palms or not.

At this point Dave is ready to roll.  Everything is loaded inside Apsaras for the journey home.  For dinner he digs up some canned tuna fish.  And wouldn’t you know it, there was a bone in the can.  He hates that!

 

Go Back

Comment