She's only happy in the sun

Monday, April 12th, 2010

We have finally departed Panama City!!! 150 gallons of water, 130 gallons of diesel, 20 gallons of gas, $2500 worth of groceries, new sheets, clean laundry, 200 tablets of gravol, countless bottles of sunscreen and we are on our way!

We pulled up the anchor at 9:30 this morning with Gromit and we are destined for the Las Perlas islands. They are only about 7 hours away from Panama City. It is a nice shake down day cruise for Artemo and crew.

Alex took the helm as we left and once we were on course it hit me....we had LEFT! I screamed, "Oh My GOD" and scared the beegeeies out of Amelia.

There is almost no wind and the sea is calm. There is a wide rolling Pacific swell but it is very comfortable. The little tiny bit of wind we do have is coming directly on the nose, so we are motoring. It is about 35 degrees and I am sure with the humidity it is much hotter. We just got our aqua-zooka's out (compliments of Martha) and sprayed each other down. FELT SO GOOD. I have a few beads of water left on me but soon this bit of relief from the heat will be gone.

We just had one of those awesome high high moments you get every so often, Graham spotted dolphins. We all ran to the front of the Artemo and watched as we came directly into a huge herd. Over 100 of them! They were jumping in the air and diving and swimming at our bow. There we all stood in our soaking wet underwear jumping and screaming with excitement. The stereo was blasting, "She's only happy in the sun" and it was seriously like Artemo was smiling. She knows she is on her way. I love our boat. Thank you Harry and Hilary. This path was meant to be.

It was pretty cool to look back behind us as the dolphins moved on and see them arrived at Gromit's boat. There they all stood at their bow, experiencing the same feelings as us. Way cool.

We are all excited to be anchoring in clean water again. We have big plans of sundowners, swimming and appetizers.....oh the life. Our plans are to stay for a few days in the islands (hopefully get to the island that survivor was filmed at) and then the next leg......7 day sail (or maybe motor) to Galapagos. We will keep our position report updated so check in often. If you click on dot on the map you will see our one or two sentence update as we cross. (fyi....these are usually GP's updates :-))

Oh and we have a cell phone. Our credit is almost up but Rob called me the other night and it was crystal clear. Graham said you can go online and get a cheap calling card for 5 cents a minute. If you do, give us a call. It was so nice to talk to someone from home and not have it cut in and out. Our cell phone number is 507-648-45875. Just be sure to look up the country code for Panama and put it in front.

Miss you