“A ship in a harbor is safe, but it not what ships are built for.”
John A. Shedd
We have spent a month in Colon, in Panama at the Shelter Bay Marina, for what was supposed to be a 2 week stay to get the bottom of the boat repainted and to reprovision. Turns out it has taken much……. longer. After 6 weeks with a sore shoulder, one cortisone injection, an X-ray and MRI, I discovered I had severe inflamation inside the rotar cuff and needed physio, hence our extended stay in Colon.
On the positive not the kids have been able to catch up on school work as we have had interent, they were able to hang out with the Totem kids longer and they have made new friends with the kids off Full Monty. Another positive is that the paint company agreed to repaint the bottom of the boat after the paint job in Trinidad started flaking off within a month. We managed to only be hauled out for 5 days, which I’m immensely pleased about as it was a bit of a hike to the toilets.
Utopia hauled out for the 2nd time in 8 months for another bottom coat of paint, hopefully this one lasts better.
On our second day at the marina, Jenny and her daughter, Justine, from the boat, Full Monty took Ava, Siobhan, Marren and I for a walk to see the howler monkeys, Capucin Monkeys, a sloth and some birds. If Justine hadn’t pointed out the sloth there is absolutely no way we would have ever seen it. Justine had a great description of what to look for, ‘look for a growth on the tree’ and that is exactly what it looked like. Sloths seem to curl themselves up into such a tight ball and blend with the tree colour so that you don’t see them. We were fortunate to see a big group of howler monkeys quite close up too, including a baby one. When we got back from our walk the boys rushed up to us, excited as they had also seen a sloth in one of the trees in the marina.
