Abandon Ship

Almost bailed ship last night.. and I would have had it not been for a bad Internet connection and the fact that I don't even have a home to go back to since my entire bathroom has been demolished and won't be ready for another week ( see my post " The Great Bathtub Deception)

It had all been brewing for some time as you could probably tell from my updates, but the straw that almost broke the camels back and sent Patrice packing happened when I realized that we would not be pushing off today as planned because somehow we didn't get the right documents to clear port authority and leave Panama. This of course would not have happened if anyone has listened to me when I made a point of telling all the captains that we needed to make sure we were all clear on how to clear. No one bothered to pay attention, and this resulted in a total fiasco at the customs office complete with flailing arms, raised Spanish voices, clueless clerks, even more clueless captains Mark and Joel who started ganging up on me telling me to let them handle it ( yeah right! these two are like Mutt and Jeff) and would have still been flailing if I hadn't threatened to abandon ship if they didn't get our proper ship agent on the phone to sort the mess out. And that no I was not going to hand over my passport to them to take a taxi into Panama City at night to try and get it handled.

Anyway, I got distraught at all the bumbling idiocy going on, the feeling of being out numbered by fools, how long it is taking to finally get this ship a sailing, my own depressive tendencies ( that by the way had not vanished just because I have traveled 3,000k miles away) and the new and hideous roll of fat around my belly that has arrived from massive shoving in for days now of trail mix that I have been using to medicate. No kidding, I finally took a glance at the packaging and I think I had been eating four thousand calories a day in friggen crack trail mix.

Now I feel like a rolly polly just like the boat and this has done nothing to add to my already dicey self- esteem. So in a moment of desperation, I tried to go on-line and make reservations to get out of here. When nothing was working Mark convinced me to go have a bit to eat and something about his gesture and long overdue sweet side that he was pouring on to try to keep his wife from ditching the cruise, the lit up Panama skyline, watching the Lor-I-Lai bobbing so sweetly on the slip, the yummy balminess of the night air, delicious pasta pomador and the fact that for some reason, I couldn't figure out where to fly anyway without my safe haven of home to retreat to-- resulted in me saying WTF?

So I am once again aboard and on board and if the weather window looks promising we will be finally getting underway tomorrow!

Today, we will explore the Marina, clear customs with the right document, may be do a bit of fishing, basic yacht provisioning and what ever else unfolds. In fact, I am off to find some fun, get kissy with Captain Mark who I have been "beating up" pretty bad for his ADD and to seriously shake up my attitude and thus start a whole new chapture of this trip called " When it got fun!"

Oy Vey.

Just Love,

Patrice