Panama on Merrimac

Through the Panama Canal

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:27:28 +0200

This is our second day at sea and things are finally starting to calm down. It was pretty hectic here and there, as you’ll read below.

But let’s start at the beginning, as one should. Marion and I bought three shopping trolleys’ worth of food in Colón at the “Rey”, a decent supermarket. The next day Rudolf arrived and he and I did the whole thing all over again, so that all the usual lockers were properly stuffed with food. On Thursday Arnold arrived and I picked him up from the airport. Rudolf had come the day before in a rental car, so we returned that straight away. An hour later he got a message that the registration papers for his Dutch car had been found in the rental car. Remarkable, because he’d lost them months ago.

Back in Panama

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:54:50 +0200

Yesterday, the day after my mother’s 85th birthday, Marion and I flew to Panama. Good flight with KLM, nice service and, if anything, almost too much food. We had a big box with us containing a new Watt&Sea, which still made it through customs and odd-sized luggage without any trouble, and luckily the man from Hertz kindly helped carry it to the counter. Worth a tip! You don’t see that very often around here; Panamanians have roughly the same service mentality as the Dutch. In other words, none… Anyway, within an hour of landing we were driving our perfectly decent SUV to Shelter Bay Marina, where we arrived about 2 hours later. Straight to the boat: is everything OK? Yes, it is. Except I’d forgotten to clear out the last bits in the fridge, so it was covered in mould and stank. So, a quick beer ashore and at nine o’clock (four in the morning back in the Netherlands) off to bed.

Cartagena, San Blas and Panama

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:47:54 +0100

After the enormous heat of Cartagena we were more than ready for a bit of sailing again. A day and a half in advance I told the agent we wanted to leave at 0600 in the morning. So his assistant came by that morning to pick up the passports. I could get used to having an agent like that. On the last evening we went to eat at Sr. Miyagi once more. We were welcomed very enthusiastically by the owner (who, incidentally, came across as very European) and the head waiter. The food was even better than on Friday, so that was absolutely fine.