Just about to head into the Caribbean


After 9 days at anchor in La Playita anchorage being tossed around constantly by freighters' wake, pilot boats' wake and just about everyone else who wanted to make the cheapskate yachties unconfortable we got our clearance to go through the canal. We found 3 line handlers to help us, one person per 'corner' line of the boat. A couple we met in the anchorage Sherrell and Eric on the SV Saranah and Jim from SV Gem. They were such good workers and obviously enjoyed the experience as much as we did.

It was a very long day, we got up at 0430 hrs, met with our 'advisor' who came aboard at 0630, locked in to the first lock at 0900, locked out at about 1800 hrs and dropped off our advisor Ivan at 1900 on the flats, which are on the other side of the northern Panama channel, headed over to the other side of the channel to hopefully find room in the only marina left standing, Shelter Bay Marina.

We ducked through all of the hazardous material freighters in the dark, but they are lit up pretty well, and then headed straight for the waypoint we had for the entrance to the marina.

On the way we had our second drama of the trip when we ran aground on an underwater hill which showed as 4 meters deep on the charts. Tony gunned the hell out of the engine in reverse and got us off after alot of praying on my part, and then with all eyes on deck and me on radar and c-map found our way to a secure dock inside the marina.

We are just about to leave here now for Cuba, about 900miles. Looks like a good weather window for about a week, but if we do need to stop we can do so at Providencia and again at Grand Cayman.

There is alot more that I can say about Panama and the preparation for the canal crossing and the people we have met on the way. We have just been very busy. I'll have time on this leg to write and save it in documents. We'll post again when we next get internet.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saint Lucia - Sint Maarten - 23rd - 26th April 2015 SHAKEDOWN

Image
Saint Lucia – Sint Maarten 23 rd – 26 th April 2015 3 days in St. Lucia and we worked very hard while there – the genoa halyard was very difficult to re-wind onto the drum, with all three of us putting our  heads together, Adam and I dismantling the lower drum several times – all of us taking turns to read and attempt to understand why we kept getting it wrong.  Now and again I think that I might be dyslexic, this was one of those times – no matter how many times we re-wound the furling line onto  that drum it was backwards. Debra and I working on sewing the sun strip back on the genoa We got it on eventually,  and furled and unfurled it while on our mooring and all seemed well – It wasn’t, it plagued us throughout the rest of the trip – we were constantly reefing and unreefing it – the unreefing was the problem and I broke another rule I usually adhere to – ‘if you have to use brute force to make something work, something’s obviously wrong and you have to stop
Read more

Moored in Sausalito - San Francisco Bay

Image
Eureka is a very nice town/city. It has an old town section which is very picturesque, mostly 'Victorian', 'Edwardian' hotels, business buildings, houses dating back to the late 1800's. Its amazing to walk around the town and think that in its heyday men were still riding the ranges shooting each other - and now it all looks so sedate and very beautiful. There is already the feel of California in the type of shops and the way the young people look. Its hard to describe that look - kinda rasta/hippy/yuppy, dunno - it's alot like San Francisco. We were told that we must see a particular Victorian house - "the most photographed Victorian in the world" - quite the statement, which of course we were cynical about. Because we forgot our map, we were instantly lost but were helped by a friendly barber who knew exactly which building we meant by the description "the most........". He gave us directions and we took off - just a few blocks away - and w
Read more

March 31st - Grand Cayman - Very Welcoming

Image
Its hard to believe that we've been here 4 days. It is very strange to go from Spanish speaking latin countries where we knew we would get good ceviche and good local beer, because we knew 2 Spanish words, cervesa and ceviche, to Grand Cayman where we are tied up to a mooring just offshore of a Burger King fast food restaurant. I guiltily admit that we have already had 2 burger and fries meals in 4 days. Arriving and checking in here has been such a pleasant experience. The greeting and welcome from the Port Captain was so professional and 'welcoming', the first Port Captain who has welcomed us into their port. The Customs and Immigration Officers came to our boat to fill in the forms, which they brought with them and would have been happy to photocopy our documents if needed, but we already had that taken care of. The 2 officers, a man and a women kept up a lively conversation in patois we had trouble following, but they included us and we had conversations about our teena
Read more