We are currently in San Carlos, on the Pacific side of Panama as Morning Stars is on the hard in Vista Mar Marina. This is all good news though…we decided to haul out to do some further prep for our passage to French Polynesia. I have so much to tell you about our time from my last post to now so here we go! 😊
Getting back to the boat in January was pretty much as we expected it, long hot work days balanced out with some fun. We quickly go into birthday planning for our VIP sailor onboard as Dylan officially became a teenager on January 15th. With no family with us and few kid boats in the marina, I started to wonder how we were going to put together an awesome birthday for him. Fortunately, very shortly before his birthday, he connected with some new friends in the marina and festivities rolled out. For his gift, we had to be very sneaky. While in Winnipeg, he had scoped out a new dive mask, snorkel and fins that would work better for him for spearfishing. He ended up getting the fins for Christmas. Jas and I hid the snorkel and mask in our suitcase and brought them back to the boat. We took him for a cheeseburger birthday lunch on his big day and he was thrilled to open his surprise gifts from us! For that whole day we took a break from boat work but needed to spend the afternoon putting tools away and cleaning up inside. That night we had party onboard to celebrate Dylan. While we sang Happy Birthday, we also FaceTimed with a bunch family back in Winnipeg. Dylan later told me that it was the best birthday he ever had and I loved that! 🎈
January gifted all of us with some really special people. First, we connected with John, Medea and their son, Johnny. They have lived aboard S/V Katemba for fifteen years. They are a really fun, adventurous, loving family and before we knew it, we were all spending as much time as possible together.
It gets better! Next, we met Inês! So we had started to explore the idea of bringing on another person as crew to help on the passage. We knew that we had to be very selective to find someone special to invite aboard to live with us. Our criteria: positivity, hard working, upbeat, quick learner and sailing experience would certainly be an asset. The day after Dylan’s birthday festivities, a fellow sailor on our dock messaged the marina’s WhatsApp group to say he knew an girl from Portugal, Inês, who was looking to crew on a boat for the passage to French Polynesia. I decided to go talk with her to see what she was like. We sat together at the BBQ area for about an hour while we both tried our best to ask each other all the important questions to get to know one another. She was wonderful, I could feel it immediately and I like to think I have a very good judge of character. I quickly saw that for moral on board she was perfect. She had crewed on a few boats but did not yet have much sailing experience. That was okay as she was capable, passionate and very anxious to learn everything she can about sailing. I had no doubt that we could trust her to be an significant help on our journey.
We had some expired life jacket cartridges and decided to have some fun with them!
Just another Sunday Funday…
Once she moved in, we quickly fell into a great routine. She was lots of fun to be around, a great cook and she worked long days with Jason as his ‘apprentice’. Together they tackled projects like the dinghy fix, generator, fuel gaskets, insulation and windows. It meant a lot to us to have her help Jason while I focused on work and school. It was hot… oh, it was hot. As some point that month we decided to get rid of the air conditioning unit. It sat in the companionway and made the cockpit useless. Not only did it drip water onto the cockpit floor, it also blasted a huge amount of hot air into the area. We decided to bite the bullet and got rid of it. We kept the hatches all open hoping the breeze would be enough to keep us cool. It didn’t – but we managed. We had to embrace the sweat and just keep it from getting into our eyes. I wish I was exaggerating on that. Fortunately, though the nights had started to cool down to a very comfortable temperature. During the days, we would use the fans throughout the boat strategically and when the heat overwhelmed us we would stop working, grab some cold drinks and head to the pool!
Preparing for our trip meant we needed to apply for French Polynesian long-stay visas. Well, we didn’t need to…we could’ve stayed in French Polynesia for three months without visas but we knew that we did not want to limit ourselves. After spending such a long time tied to a dock in Panama, we are anxious to be on the move and explore as much as we can on the Pacific. A ‘long stay’ visa would give us a year to island hop but the application process is a bit daunting. First you file an online application that gives you the ability to book an interview at the French embassy in Panama City. For that appointment there are many required documents you need to bring with you (copies and originals). I understand that this is because they want to be sure that sailors coming over are self-sufficient financially and will not be seeking employment. You must have a very good medical insurance policy and a respectful sized wad of money in your bank account. In addition to documentation to support that all, I needed to pull together back-up to support our Canadian residency, letters promising that we will not seek employment, colour copies of all stamped pages in all our passports…the list was long. The most challenging part for me happened when I had questions but there was no one to ask. The contact phone numbers and email addresses at the embassy would go unanswered so I had to turn to messaging our WhatsApp group at the marina in hopes of getting clarification. For example, I had heard from others that our medical insurance needed to be zero deductible. Our policy is not zero deductible. The requirement listing from the embassy did not say it needed to be…I was going on hearsay so we were hesitant to spend the money to changes our policy. We started to hear of people who were approved without having a zero deductible policy so we decided to just go with what we have. There were similar issues that would come up but I just could not get clear answers and had to make assumptions. We took our stack of documentation to our appointments at the embassy on February 25th and all seemed to go very well. We are now on our fourth week awaiting approval so we should hear back soon. Fingers crossed we get approved! Should we not be, we will still go as planned but will need to stick to the three month time limit in French Polynesia before pushing to New Zealand.
The month of January was a blur with hot and sweaty boat work, enjoying Inês in our lives and the beginning of Sunday Fundays with our friends from Katemba. John and Medea were thrilled to show us their secret beach that we had no idea was so close to the marina! With them, we also had a day of racquet ball at the beach, dinners together and chill sessions in the pool. We now do our best to continue their tradition of ‘Sunday Fundays’ – a day away from work tasks to enjoy family and friends.
We sadly parted ways with Medea, John and Johnny when they set sail for San Blas. We keep in regular touch with them though and I just know our paths will cross again, somewhere…somehow. Around that same time Fedi, Silke, Sero and Stella sailed back into the marina! It was wonderful to reconnect with the crew from Beso del Viento again and they happily accepted our invitation for them to crew with us as line handles when we took Morning Stars through the Panama Canal! 🤩 More on that in the next post!
We ended up having a bit of a scare towards the end of January – Dylan was hit by a car. He had been using the long board our boat broker, Charles, happily let him use. One afternoon Dylan was longboarding on the (very quiet) road down from the marina when a car came up from behind and hit him with the side view mirror. He was thrown off the board and scraped up the left side of his body. He was not wearing a helmet so we, obviously, were extremely thankful that he was not hurt much worse. It was disheartening to know that the drive was well aware that he hit Dylan but did not stop. What kind of a person does that?
January ended with us shifting into high gear for getting the boat ready for the Pacific. In addition to the many boat projects Jason had on the go…I had created another list of tasks that would need to be tackled in the coming weeks prior to taking Morning Stars through the canal!
Before transiting the canal, we also, sadly, had to say good-bye to Inês. That’s the thing with this type of life…you can make your plans but you have to also be prepared to pivot as things change constantly. My next blog talks about why Inês left and how we now have Blandine (Blan), from France, onboard. Blandine plans to cross the Pacific with us! Don’t worry, the tale of this crew change is a happy tale to tell! Let’s just say I am amazed over and over again with the remarkable people The Big Trip brings to us! 🥰
The blog below talks about why we have decided to add the above Ko-fi button. 😊
Random acts of kindness
The Big Trip 
