KEY POINTS:
The flashy Panamanian gunship seems a little out of place among the ramshackle Creole fishing boats and rusted yachts, but it's the only thing that's real here in Shelter Bay.
To Hollywood, this is Haiti. We've been sitting in the middle of the film set for the latest James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, so Shelter Bay - on the Atlantic coast of Panama with nothing for kilometres except scraggly jungle, old gun batteries and howler monkeys - is more interesting than usual.
The film crews are noisy and happy - a number of them Kiwis (of course) and always ready to challenge James Bond's South African stunt double to a game of rugby when the cameras are off.
As for us, we have worked the Pacific coast of Panama and, having returned through the canal, we are waiting to take the 50m yacht home to its owners in Florida. It will be a five-day passage up the coast of Central America, but the paperwork to get into the United States hasn't arrived, causing a slight panic among the crew that we will be stuck here.
The humidity is sticky now that summer is coming and the beaches of Fort Lauderdale are sounding attractive. But there are worse ways to sweat out the days than watching the endless parade of frantic high-speed boat chases.
For me this trip is more than leaving Panama, our home for the last three months. I'm leaving the yacht in Fort Lauderdale after a year on board as stewardess and sometime deckhand. I know all of the yacht's 50 metres (I've cleaned it minutely), I know its niggles and leaks and I've learned to trust it in any ocean.
Which is just as well - with our US entry papers comes a storm, pushing up from the southern Caribbean and leaving a short window for us to cast off before it hits.
It doesn't matter how long you spend strapping things down and locking things up, everything moves when you head out into the swell. Knocks and crashes echo through the boat. Nothing stays still. You can't put down your mug while you find a tea bag, you have to slide along the walls to the galley to get the milk and then wait till the boat heels the right direction before you open the fridge.
It is not seasickness that gets you on a passage, it is the extended frustration. Even standing still takes muscles to counter the roll of the sea. And when you sleep in the forepeak, at the very tip of the bow, gravity pulls at your body as the boat ploughs up the face of each wave and you get air when it plunges down the other side.
Cruising the coast of Panama means negotiating the shipping heading for the canal, dodging tankers, fishermen and coastguards and banana boats (and I mean the huge Chiquita Bonita banana ships, no dugouts here). It means being dwarfed by Panamax cargo ships that come in at 290m long and 58m above the water, fitting through the canal with two feet to spare either side. They are vast and sharply rectangular, and as Douglas Adams would've said, they float in much the same way that bricks don't.
We soon pass the entrance to the canal and are flying north. Normally two engines push us along at 12 knots. With the wild weather behind us we reach 16.
Somewhere out of sight is the coast of Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, but the boat could be anywhere. There is nothing but ocean in all directions. It is restful because you can't actually do anything. Every plan becomes so well thought out that it seems real, lived before the steps that might make it happen have any chance of occurring.
But apart from buying coastal property with Daniel Craig, what else does one do at sea for five days? There are eight hours on watch each day for all nine crew. For me that's midnight till 4am and then midday till 4pm with the deckhand and the mate. And I'm afraid that if you aren't too keen on inane games and daydreams, running away to sea may not be for you.
We sit on the bridge, counting boats, playing with binoculars and night goggles, watching the radar and marking our position on the chart each hour, checking the engine room, filling out the logbook and making tea.
Before long we have played as much "I spy" as we ever want to.
We discuss the perfect holiday, the perfect night out and, strangely, the moment as kids when we realised adults were fallible. We alphabetically name countries, capital cities, animals, alcoholic beverages and actors.
Physical challenges are suggested but when it threatens to degenerate into "Big Brother At Sea" we find an iPod and begin playing in alphabetical order. It kicks off with ABBA and AC/DC but we are horrified when, after four hours, we still aren't through the As.
It goes on for 29 hours. We hear almost 600 artists with some odd juxtapositions: Frank Sinatra followed by Frank Zappa; Harry Connick Jr by the Aussie hip-hop of the Hilltop Hoods; Janet Jackson by Janis Joplin. We have listened to INXS, Johnny Cash, the Kooks and Elemeno P - mundane, sublime, best, worst and everything in between.
The wind dies completely in the lee of Cuba, just visible as a dark line of pines. We lean over the rails, watching our reflection in the glossy, flat water. At night, football-sized phosphorescent jellyfish are caught up and tumbled to the surface of the inky water.
For me these passages are the best bits - being on deck at all hours with the actually very serious job of lookout, just like sailors throughout history. Someone stood on the foredeck of the ship Pinta, one of Columbus's trio, and spotted Cuba at 2am on October 1492, just as we watched it at 2pm, April 2008 - but with the advantage of GPS.
After watch we put a fishing line off the stern but we're moving too fast to catch anything. It's really an excuse to spend time in a hammock slung between the halyards. Flying fish burst out of the water in clumps like particles of a huge animal, hundreds at a time, skidding on the tops of the waves. There are dolphins, too, and a huge brown turtle.
All this lounging about may not sound like work, but believe me - it's earned. When the boat has guests on board, 17-hour work days are normal.
It's almost torture to stare through a porthole at the Darien jungle in the south of Panama and not know what it sounds like in there, or how it smells. Vasco Nunez de Balboa became the first European to cross the Panamanian isthmus (apparently in a full suit of armour) and see the Pacific 497 years ago right here, losing 133 men to jungle sicknesses in three weeks.
My only danger is being engulfed by a mountain of laundry or perhaps being the first victim of a very stressed chef.
But sometimes the Darien comes to us. When we anchor, fleets of dugouts set out from the shore. Men, women, children and puppies pile on to the deck, sometimes 20 at a time, spreading mini markets of beads, cloth and baskets woven so tightly they can hold water.
These days the Darien is notorious for druglords and guerrillas, a gap between Panama and Colombia that Lonely Planet recommends is only for those with a death wish.
So what's a luxury yacht doing here? Well, co-existing with the rebels is a sport-fishing resort with a palm-roofed restaurant famous for its buffet dinner.
On our last midnight watch, the sounds of Zero 7 fade into silence and we congratulate each other as if we have done more than pushing buttons on the sound system for days on end. To time our arrival in Fort Lauderdale for the dawn opening of the Pier 66 bridge, we have slowed to 6 knots and some of the sloppy weather has caught up with us. Quite frankly, the ship rolls like a pig in waves that look huge now that we are hardly moving.
The constant churn of the wake has given way to slaps and splashes along the hull with loud cracks when gusts snap the sails out.
Civilisation of sorts is in sight. Brightly lit hotels line the Florida beaches. The passage is over.
Want to run away to sea?
What you need: A big smile and your STCW95 - a sea safety course required by most yachts, with sea survival and fire fighting (you can get this when you get there, but it's twice the price in Europe).
Where: Southern France and Mallorca are the best spots in the Med to pick up boat jobs - anywhere with a marina is worth a shot. You can look for yachting jobs in Fort Lauderdale, but it's hard to get a visa if you don't already have a job and you can't look for work unless you have a visa.
How: Walk the docks early in the morning asking for work. Crew agencies help, but it's common to find work through someone you know or have met in a bar.
When: April/May in the Med for a full yacht season or November if looking for a transatlantic passage.