Mon-Tue, Aug 4-5th - MORE Boat Chores and Jam with Frank from WINDSONG

After a week in Panama City, we were already losing our direction. The headliner had taken longer than I'd expected, and we weren't having very much fun. After all the boat chores it was my turn to do something fun.

When we had first arrived I had put out a call on the VHF net to any musicians in the cruisers fleet who might want to jam, and had hooked up with a guy named Frank from a boat named WINDSONG. To date, we had both been busy and had not been able to get together, but on Monday morning, while tearing down the prep work for the headliners, I called Frank again on the VHF and asked if he wanted to get together the next day, Tuesday. He said yes, and that we should meet at 2:00 pm at the bar at the Balboa Yacht Club, located Canal side. So we met early Tuesday afternoon at the appointed location where we drank beers and traded tunes until nearly sunset. Frank is a really nice guy and a good player, so it was great fun and a much needed break for me.

When we got back to the boat that night, we had a talk and tried to re-focus on what we were supposed to be doing in Panama City: getting ready to go to the Perlas Islands. We'd already been in P.C. 11 days and were both finding it a dilemma that we had come here, ostensibly, just to get the boat ready and scoot out for a month or so to the Perlas Islands. Then we'd planned to return to P.C. for the real, and more major, series of boat chores that we needed to do before we transited the Panama Canal. However, what was happening was that there were so many things that needed to be done that we were trying to attack everything and anything that came along, especially now that we were finally in "the big city" where we could more-or-less find anything we needed. Therefore, tasks that I'd meant to put off til later, like the headliner, were able to get the better of me here. The surroundings of the big city were driving us to do all this work, that might not, strictly speaking, have been required for a trip out to the Perlas Islands. So, that night, we prioritized the "To-Do" list with the most important tasks that we needed to accomplish, and we agreed that we would leave for the Islands on the upcoming Saturday.