Returning to Panama
We return to Shelter Bay Marina September 11, 2018 to start our second year of cruising. Miraj is ‘on the hard’ waiting for our arrival, power washed and gleaming in the late afternoon sun. It is hot and humid and perspiration rises like mist. The heat and the proximity to the wilderness hold me in an exotic embrace, never letting me forget I am in a foreign, tropical territory. Howler monkeys roar early mornings and evenings and when a rainstorm is approaching; a desolate chorus of primates. Walking along the edge of the jungle I see them hanging from long black tails, eating leaves upside-down. An 8-foot saltwater crocodile patrols off the sterns between the docks, and colorful parrots screech overhead. We work hard for ten days, sanding, and painting the bottom, waxing the hull, replacing the zincs, polishing the stainless, lubricating the blocks and removing and greasing the through-hulls. We pull out our 275 feet long ...