My daughter worries that I’m lonely, sailing all by myself with not even a dog or a cat for company.

Not a bit of it. Let me tell you about the last few days.

I came back to Linton Bay to collect the new outboard. It arrived in Colón via a forwarding company in Miami and from there to the Marina. No sooner had I picked a spot in the Eastern anchorage than an email landed from Mike and Nicki of the Australian yacht Zen Again: They had spotted me coming in, identified the Ocean Cruising Club burgee, and would I like to join them for sundowners? In fact, there were seven of us in their cockpit by the time the sun dipped below the horizon in a yet another blaze of gold and purple.

Mike is an electronics engineer cruising the world as he builds IT systems for people in offices from Sydney to San Francisco. Zen Again positively hums with electricity – and he was appalled to discover that I had OpenCPN charts for the whole world but had never looked at them because I didn’t know how.

It’s true.  Andy on Cohiba uploaded them for me in St Lucia, but there’s more to it than just having this stuff in your microchips. You have to know how to access it, what to do with it when you’ve found it…

Mike offered a tutorial, and for an hour the following afternoon, I cudgelled my brain with the difference between Raster charts and Vector files and did I need a GPS dongle? I was pathetically grateful even though I don’t think I was any further forward. Anyway, we repaired to the Black Pearl – and there, from the next table, were joined by a tattoo-covered American called John with a Westerly Oceanlord. He had a baseball cap proclaiming “Surf Naked” and the two of us decided we had been living each other’s lives for the past 40 years. He was a professional skier from Aspen. I started sailing when I was five. I was able to assure him that he had indeed done absolutely the right thing in buying a boat first and then working out how to sail her.

Then we added some more chairs and a Turkish family with two little boys joined in. Nibbles appeared and so did another round of Panama’s version of IPA which they call Frog for no particular reason. That turned into dinner and then Roxana turned up in her red dress.

Roxana is a Hungarian violinist who gave up playing with major orchestras to sail her 30footer where the wind takes her. She pays her way by busking absolutely world-class music in any bar that will have her.  The Black Pearl will have her any time she feels like turning up.

And I’m wrapping up this post sitting in Julie’s Juice Bar waiting for my “vegetarian bowl” before leaving for Portobello because they have an ATM machine and there isn’t one in the San Blas. After that, if I can get to Banedup by Sunday afternoon, there’s usually an impromptu party on the beach. If not, the beach bar does absolutely the best piña colada and I shall be quite happy sit with it on my own, at a table knee-deep in the water under a palm-frond roof with solar-powered fairy lights as the sun goes down on another day in paradise.

And here’s a video of Roxana at the Black Pearl: IMG_4677