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Update: February 2009
We just learned from cruisers that Bruce, the manager of the haul-out facility, a very capable and friendly American, was fired last New Year’s eve due to differences with the marina manager Ross.

That now leaves the repair facilities in the hands of Ross who by my own experience and many  accounts from cruisers is the last person you want to run a shipyard.  The only reason he’s there is the close friendship between his wife and the wife of the yard’s owner. It’s really too sad that one of the few marina’s in this area isn’t living up to its potential due to poor management choices.

So, a new reason to avoid Shelterbay. A good alternative the the Panamarina which is getting better all the time.  Unfortunately, the Cristobal Yacht Club was closed in February.

Original post:
As part of our trip to Cartagena, we decided to make a de-tour to Panama and spend a week or two ‘at home’ before going to our final destination.  We contacted Shelterbay Marina in Cristobal (Colon), situated in the former US Army base Ft. Sherman. 

As we are a big vessel, we expressed our concerns to the marina about our draft but manager Russ told us, ‘no problem’.

Well, upon arriving, it turned out to be a problem after all and the only place they had for us was somebody’s work barge.  Since we didn’t have much alternative, we settled for this very basic arrangement (no electricity, Internet and a dangerous improvised gangway to get from the barge to the shore.  We also assumed they would certainly give us a really good deal on the standard rate because our berth was not close to any marina standard and not even an official dock space (eating in their surplus capacity).

But, upon making our case for a substantial discount, were we wrong! They could not care less.  We finally paid even more than the quite expensive Flamenco Marina (in Balboa).  Apparently, their business is so slow, the tactic is to try to squeeze money from whoever enters their waters.  Repeat business?  Who cares?  Worth of mouth recommendation? Not at Shelterbay Marina.

To add insult to injury, we received a call the 2nd day from manager Ross to either leave or post a $ 100K bond !!  Needless to say we were enraged. But luckily, the repair yard manager told us to safely ignore ‘manager’ Ross and stay put.

We did but unfortunately we had to cut short our stay in Panama to only 4 days.

The bottomline: don’t expect any customer service or sense of fair business practice from the owners and manager of Shelterbay Marina.  This way, they’ll surely have a long way to go before this project goes anywhere.

 p.s.: the administrative staff at the office was very friendly and apologetic about the whole affair.    Time for a management shakeup!