Tuesday, June 1, 2010 – Flamenco Marina, Balboa, Panama

This morning, Captain Jim learned that his mother was failing fast and her death was imminent. She had fallen and broken her hip on April 1st and had been going downhill ever since. He was sorry that he couldn’t make the rest of the trip with us, but it was important for him to go home and be with his family. Arrangements were made for Jim to fly out early Wednesday morning and he also booked a room in a hotel close to the airport for the night. Because we had already done the paperwork to “clear out” of Panama, we called the agent we’d been using for our Panama passage, Tina McBride, and she assisted us with making the necessary adjustments to our traveling papers and our crew manifest. We didn’t want to show up in Costa Rica





with a record that we left with five people and showed up with only four!

We spent a couple of hours on the internet at the nearby café and at 1 pm, Dracula, Tina’s partner, showed up with the Customs and Immigration paperwork we needed. It was 3 pm before the documentation was in order and too late to start the next 200-mile passage. So after Jim departed in the taxi for the hotel, we went out for a dinghy ride with the dogs. The skies were still pretty gray, but we welcomed the respite from the heat.

We ate the last of the mahi mahi for dinner and hoped that we would be able to catch some more fresh fish tomorrow as we continued our journey towards San Diego.