{"id":2396,"date":"2015-04-21T07:43:09","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T07:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=2396"},"modified":"2015-06-01T07:43:51","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T07:43:51","slug":"rebel-rebel-la-playita-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=2396","title":{"rendered":"Rebel, Rebel – La Playita, Panama"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Panama<\/a>
Panama City through the smog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

La Playita anchorage on the Panama City side of the canal is the only place where you can drop the hook for free, so it was a no-brainer for us to stay there after the pummeling our bank balance has had recently.<\/p>\n

There is one cost though \u2013 the marina charges $35\/week to use their dinghy dock. OK, fair enough and because we arrived on a Thursday and their week starts on Monday they charged us a pro-rata rate until the following Monday and we got our coloured wrist bands to prove we\u2019d paid. So far, so good \u2013 we settled in for a bit of a rolly night with all the shipping coming in and out of the channel, but nothing bad enough to disturb our sleep.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a>
One of the big cruise ships heading for the Canal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next morning the welder who fitted our wind-generator pole in Shelter Bay was supposed to come to add another brace to the contraption. We waited, and waited and left numerous messages on his phone but by mid-morning we had to accept that he was a no-show. We really weren\u2019t that surprised, it was just annoying wasting time when we had so many other things to do. He\u2019d left the stainless tubing with us, so Bruce and Geoff worked out how they could attach the third brace themselves using a bimini fitting with hose clamps. It may not be the prettiest construction, but at least there\u2019s less movement in the top half of the pole. There\u2019d been so little wind in Shelter Bay and coming through the canal that we weren\u2019t able to tell whether it was working, so when the wind piped up in the anchorage we were very keen to see those amps pumping into the batteries. Instead what we got was zip, nada, nothing. Bruce checked and re-checked the wiring to no avail. So at great cost we now have a lovely wind generator complete with stainless mount that generators precisely\u2026.zero!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The non-generating wind generator<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To cap it off, we\u2019ve still had no luck getting our portable generator fixed. The part we need would take 10 days to get here, plus fitting time, and we just can\u2019t delay our Pacific crossing any longer. So for now we\u2019ll have to keep the batteries charged with the motors if the solar panels don\u2019t give us enough juice, and try and sort out the other problems further down the line.<\/p>\n

Very frustrating to say the least. Thankfully we had our buddies on other boats in the anchorage, so the gatherings at sundowners helped drown our sorrows!<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>
Our cruising buddies on “Rehua”,”Bladerunner” and “Taff Tumas” enjoying sundowners at La Playita<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We found a great taxi driver, Luis, who was used to ferrying yachties around town, so over the weekend we raced around getting spares for our engines and outboard, plus doing the last minute fresh food provisioning. The supermarkets on this side of the canal are much bigger and better stocked, so we managed to get most of what we needed without trouble. Luis even helped push the trolley for me, and acted as interpreter when I couldn\u2019t find what I needed!<\/p>\n

Panama City is a strange place \u2013 the old part of the city is like a slum, and extremely unsafe. We saw police posted on almost every block as we drove through. But then at the other extreme is the modern section with the huge skyscrapers and fast-paced living. We didn\u2019t have much time to sightsee, but it didn\u2019t strike me as somewhere I\u2019d want to spend much time anyway. It was smoggy and incredibly humid the whole time we were here.<\/p>\n

By now it was Monday morning and several of the other boats had already left for Las Perlas. We planned to leave in the afternoon because we still had to pick up the (unfixed) Honda generator from the dealers and check out with Customs, so Bruce went ashore one last time. His big mistake was forgetting to take off last week\u2019s wristband. As he got back to the dock he was accosted by the marina staff who\u2019d spotted the old wristband and asked him to pay another week\u2019s rates for the dinghy dock. He says: \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be joking, I\u2019m leaving today, all I\u2019m doing is stepping off your dock onto our dinghy and we\u2019ll be gone\u201d. She says: \u201cSorry sir, but you have to pay $35\u201d. While Bruce argued the toss, Luis had taken the generator down onto the dock, and Geoff was bringing the dinghy in to pick up Bruce. The haggling continued, with Bruce offering to pay $5 pro-rata, and the Dock Nazi insisting on her full week\u2019s dues. When Bruce refused, her response was \u201cwell, I\u2019ll have to have you arrested then\u201d. \u201cOK, arrest me\u201d says he, holding out his wrists to be cuffed – at which point everyone including the security guard looked baffled. While they were thinking up their next response, Bruce yelled down to Geoff \u201cGet the generator in the dinghy and go back to the boat\u201d. Geoff did as he was told, and sped off, leaving Bruce standing on the dock blockaded now by two or three guys in army uniform. With a stand-off looming, and not really wishing to be thrown into a Panama jail, there was nothing much for him to do except walk away – all the way down the road around the breakwater until he was well out of sight of the marina where he scrambled down the rocks, and signaled to us to come and pick him up! Not wishing to play the starring role in an Interpol manhunt, we decided it was definitely time to leave and upped anchor heading for Las Perlas. Oh my rebel skipper!<\/p>\n

\"Sunset<\/a>
Sunset at La Playita<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La Playita anchorage on the Panama City side of the canal is the only place where you can drop the hook for free, so it was a no-brainer for us to stay there after the pummeling our bank balance has had recently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-svtoucan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6B46t-CE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2396"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2406,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396\/revisions\/2406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}