Saturday 19th May

Colon,
Panama.

9 20.716 N
79 54.555 W

We woke after a good night sleep feeling refreshed and ready to begin the checking in process. Gerry had to go to do the checking in stuff by him self whilst I had to wait on board for him to return. Of course it was Saturday so everything ground to a rapid halt. Gerry wasn’t able to check us in but he let our agent know that we had arrived and were ready for the canal passage whenever it could be arranged. Once Gerry returned to the boat we collected up the leads for the computer and then headed into the Yacht club / marina to register our laptop for internet access. Once it was registered we checked our email and I loaded a couple of day’s worth of blog notes and photos. Gerry got bored waiting for me to do it so he suggested that we have lunch and take the computer over to the dinning room table and finish my blogging there. Of course once we got to the dinning room tables we noticed the huge signs which say "No computers at the tables”. I packed it away and we had lunch and then made our way back out to our boat in the anchorage. Gerry had organized for us to go into the Marina as soon as there was a space – we would be waiting until Monday for this to happen. Our afternoon was spent relaxing reading books and tidying up some of the mess we had made during the transit. We decided to go ashore for dinner, again at the yacht club/ marina where the food isn’t terribly exciting but it is very cheap. We chatted with an elderly American man in the dinning room about Panama and his life here, he has warned us to be very careful here as the unemployment rate is around 45% and the crime rate reflects that. I think the name of the place – Colon, is very apt from what I can tell. Anyway after a pleasant evening we dinked back out to the boat for the night.