PANAMA CANAL BEWARE of SHELTER BAY MARINA

[fritzthecat]

Dear fellow cruisers, we passt last weekend the Panama canal from atlantic to Pacific. The administration ordered us to anchor off the Shelter bay marina, wich turned out to be a desaster! We had 6 friends invited to join in to sail with us to the Pacific on Sat. Oct. 17th. at 11.00am they expected us in the restaurant of the marina. All of them Panamanian residents, so we expected no problems, as they did consume in the restaurant..... as our dinghi got there the marina manager himself Ms. BOSCHETTI denied the exsess to our dinghi " as this was private proppertty and he does not want boats of non customers to carry people" then he gave our dinghi a push with his leg to get it away..... lost balance and fell in the marina basin. We complained to the local coastguard station (Aeronaval), were arrested as Mr. Boschetti (47 years) acused me (70 years) to have trespassed his marina waters without permition and tore him in the water. My fried Rudi Gamberoni, Owner of the good vessel Alessandra ( to be seen as pirate ship in the "movi caribbean pirates") and me got arrested, brought to court, lost our transit scheduled for 13.30h..... so the local authoroties were used obviously by the marina to cause troubles. We then sailed on Sun. 18 without problems to the Pacific ocean.....

[daletournier]

Obviously I cannot comment on your situation BUT my dealings with Juan the marina manager at the start of this year were nothing but very good, the marina stuff were also excellent.