We left Cayman yesterday noon and are about 120 miles down range towards Panama.  The trip started with some big waves but both these and the wind died away, so this morning finds us motor-sailing in a smooth but rolly sea.  Yesterday we were visited by two

different pods of dolphins, who each played with us for 20 minutes or so.  We saw a huge brown stalk looking thing, that was floating.  It was 20 or so feet long.  It could have been bamboo or some kind of seaweed but I am sure it was a tentacle off one of Helen's giant killer squids.

 

We have watched flying fish and a couple of low flying strange birds and then at night the stars.  The night was so clear.  We are now far enough south that we see both Polaris and the Southern Cross.

 

This morning we have showered, some of us have shaved, and we are sitting drinking hot cider.  Life at sea.

I hope the wind picks up soon, so we can turn the engine off.

We left Grand Cayman on Tuesday and Friday morning finds us heading south under full sail about 270 miles north of Panama.  We made the "right hand turn" yesterday in the early afternoon.  Before that we were hard on the wind and as they say, "Gentlemen, do not sail to weather".  This is like horses sweating etc. but now Annette knows what it means.  Once we made the turn south, we have been

 under sail, which is both faster and quieter.  We have a roller that comes in from the port side every 10 seconds or so.  This means our entire world tips about 25 to 30 degrees and then comes back upright.  You have to time opening a locker exactly, otherwise the contents seem to explode in your face. 

 

We haven't seen any whales or sharks eating dead people, or anything like that, just dolphins and flying fish.  Attila found a flying fish on board last night and has been sulking all morning since it was taken away from her.

It has been pleasant on this point of sail, as you can either watch cloud shapes, or read a book, or take your dog for a short walk. 

 

We are in Panama!!!!

We arrived at night of course.  I tried to time our trip so we would come into the harbor at daylight but it's not easy to match  wind and waves etc.  It was so exciting to approach a strange harbor / town at night.  You have a huge mixture of lights.  Some don't matter, street lights, cell-phone towers etc.  Some you need to get right, like the ends of the breakwaters and some are actually coming at you and are going to run you over if you don't get out of the way.  We had to talk to "Cristobal Signal Station," which is sort of like a traffic control at an airport, except of course these are cruise ships, tankers etc.

We didn't get run over.  We did go between the correct red and green light and found the anchorage just as the sun was coming up behind a line of palm trees.

 

This is not the same as Cayman, where we had to wait for a customs agent to hand deliver our "Hawaiian sling" fishing spear before we left.  Since we arrived here on a Sunday, we just make ourselves comfortable and take care of formalities on Monday when it is convenient for everyone.  We found an empty slip at the Panama City Yacht Club and moved here mid morning.  We were invited to a Super Bowl tailgate party which we attended.  This was pleasant and the first time we have talked to fellow cruisers.  We skipped the game though.  We had a meal at  the Yacht Club restaurant.  It was $9.20 for two dinners with two beers.  This compares with $80 for two lunches in Cayman - tip is  extra.

Our first full day in Panama was a wonderful mixture of frenetic motion coupled with a lot of non-activity.  First, the agent I had spoken to by telephone on Sunday when we arrived, told me that he would have immigration and customs people at our boat by 0800.  Well, I didn't really believe it but we had to be washed, dressed, breakfasted, tidied the boat, and walked the puppy, just in case.  Around 0930 a tall man appeared, introduced himself as Alex, said he worked for the agent etc. and asked for our passports.  He disappeared with them and returned 30 minutes later and announced we had cleared immigration.  He then asked for ships documents, crew list etc.  30 minutes later he produces a form for me to sign and wants to know how many tons of fuel oil we carry and how many tons per day do we consume.  I explain that it is a s-a-i-l boat and we don't use tons of fuel.  Anyway, 10 minutes later we are "cleared in" and we haven't left the boat.

 

We told him that we needed a sail repair as the "leech seam" of our big Genoa (the first sail at the pointy end), had ripped out during passage.  A few minutes later he had located a sail repair shop and the sail repairer wanted us to deliver the sail to him.  I had assumed from everything I have read, that it takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete this canal transit process.  We had several leisurely days ahead of us..........so, Annette and I jump to and drop the big sail.  We get it "flaked", folded into a huge package, lashed down so it can't escape and finally the two of us man/woman handled it off the boat onto the dock.  I go into the Yacht Club office to pay the slip rental, since this is the first time they are open.  The Yacht Club guy wants to know how long we are staying.  I said I didn't know as we hadn't really spoken to our agent.  The next thing you know, he hands me a cell phone and the agent is on the other end.  The agent indicates that the "admeasurer" will be there within the next ten minutes.  I must not leave the boat but send Annette in a taxi to the sail repair place and we are to transit on Wednesday.

 

Wow, total panic.  I tell Annette to get shoes on and look like a city girl etc. and stuff her in a taxi with two large men to head off into the warrens of "Colon," the most despicable hive of pirates, cutthroats, thieves, etc., etc, - or whatever it was that Obi wan Kenobi warned Luke about.

I waited patiently on the boat doing boat stuff.  My wife returned looking flushed but intact.  We did laundry - well OK, I just pinned up a few clothes to dry - we put up the sun shades.  I got a plug to match the electric outlet on the dock and built myself a "converter," so we could run our boat on "city power."  I called the agent and told him we hadn't seen an admeasurer.  "Oh Shit! Hold the phone!"  As I patiently wait counting $1 per minute on my satellite phone..., "you know, I could call you back"......."Don't go any where! He'll be there in a few minutes!"

 

I fixed the loose chain on the autopilot.  I found a 25 ampere breaker to put on the water-maker to see if it will cure the problem of the unit popping it's existing breaker after 20 minutes of running.  I went to the office to use their Internet connection to sort out e-mail.....

At 1600, I called the agent back.  More cursing.  Well, we will see you first thing tomorrow morning.

 

Alex showed up hauling four large lines (ropes to you non-sailors) and 12 automobile tires wrapped up in garbage bags.  The latter are

 festooned around the boat to protect it, during the canal transit.  Pretty much the same way I wished I had been able to treat my children's automobiles when they first began to drive.

 At 1700 Alex announced, "that man over on the next boat is the admeasurer.  He is my cousin."

 

1730 Alex's cousin approaches us.  Talks for about 20 minutes on his cell phone and then tells us, we will be "admeasured" tomorrow.

 

The sun sets over Panama.  Another day is over.  We sip our wine and admire our pretty stack of tires..... 

 

Day two in Panama was another relaxing gallop.  I replaced the breaker on the water maker.  We topped up our water tanks from the

 dock.  The admeasurer finally showed up and "admeasured us."  By amazing coincidence, he came up with the same fee that I had computed six months ago in Santa Fe.  He just took about 40 minutes to do it.

 

We ate a pleasant lunch in down town Colon.  Annette admired all the stores and I admired the amazingly short skirts.... no, no, I also admired the stores.

 

We then went shopping for groceries so we could feed 5 extra people for the day transit of the canal.  ("Advisor" and 4 line handlers).  I had to keep reminding someone who has a long habit of getting carried away, that we only had them for a day.  They get off the boat before New Zealand.

 

We then went and collected our repaired Genoa and reinstalled it.  Sounds easy but that sucker is BIG!

 

I spoke to the agent I am using in Panama at 2100 hrs last night by phone.  He informed me that we might be transiting the canal at 0400 this morning but probably 0700.  Well, that was nice to know.  Annette and I struck all the awnings, stowed the outboard etc. at 2330 last night, aided by flashlights and several glasses of wine.  Annette made me get up at 0500 and have breakfast for the unlikely event that the SOB is telling the truth.  This gives me an opportunity to catch up on my e-mail.

Breakfast time found us predictably on the Atlantic End of the Panama canal.  The West end right?  Go get an atlas and look it up and win some bar bets.

Anyway, a late morning call to the agent came back with a “maybe” Friday transit.  We went to lunch with a retired attorney / cruiser, who has been here several years.  I ate turtle for lunch – doesn’t taste like chicken – and Annette went with the chopped up bait.  Later that afternoon, we toured the old American compound of “pre-Jimmy Carter giving the canal away” days.  When the USA signed the treaty with Panama in 1904, Panama ceded a strip of land 5 miles either side of the canal.  This became “little America” with the Panama Canal agency as a quasi-military organization, so when combined with the U.S. military presence at the time, formed this huge base.  The homes all looked a similar design but then there is the bowling alley, swimming pool, high school, super-markets, etc.  In the last few years, Panamanians have been moving into these properties.  Some of them look recently remodeled and pristine and others looked gutted.

We went up to the first set of canal locks between the Caribbean Sea and Gatun Lake.  It was awe inspiring.  You can stand within feet of locomotives dragging ships that have been designed to fit the Panama canal locks to within a foot or so.  The immense container ships and bulk cargo vessels are therefore only feet away as they pass.  The lock gates look familiar but bigger than the English canal gates. What is missing is the English Pub, which as you all should know, adorn just about every set of lock gates in England.  There is something restful about watching all that water go up and down while you have a pint in your hand.
Friday (maybe) is our turn to mix it with the big boys.  If they fail to hit the brakes, so to speak, as they enter the lock behind us, they won’t feel a thing……

The “old” American yacht club on Gatun Lake stands pretty much deserted.  It is surrounded by a lush and verdant jungle of huge banana plants, vine thingies and towering trees.  The lake is beautiful, serene and peaceful and at the yacht club you can still see the nets around the swimming area to keep the crocodiles out.

 

We are across the continent but not yet in the Pacific.  Currently anchored on Gatun Lake near Galliard Cut.  Tomorrow we drop down into the Pacific.

Last night around 2130 hrs there was a power cut throughout Colon.  At the same time I set out in a taxi to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken for the line handling crew.  Weird.  Sort of like those disaster movies - Terminator or Blade Runner.  I asked the cab driver if it was normal to see so many people out on the street or was it because of the power cut.  He said, "they ain't got no fan man, so they stays outside".

I made it back to the marina and called the Canal authority for a departure time.  They said 0630.   At 0445 we had been awake about a minute, when there was knocking on the boat.  The line handling crew of four had arrived.  A radio call to the canal control set our pilot pick up time to 0645.  He showed up about an hour later than this.

 

We were rafted with an Australian yacht but then we had to raft our raft up to a tug.  We were in the sandwich between the two.  The first lock was iffy because the tug crew did not take up the slack on our bow line which allowed the Australian yacht on the outside of us to drift dangerously close to the wall.  The Australian captain looked a lot more concerned than I was, for some reason or other.  After that excitement, things went pretty smoothly.  When up-locking you go into the lock behind a huge ship.  When the lock gates open, the big ship hits the throttle and it is then like being in the rapids.  After that we untie from the tug but still rafted up and have to get over to the side of the lock so the tug can pass us again.  Then we have to "hover" while the tug attempts to simultaneously tie up to the wall and destroy our "wa" by hammering his props and stern thrusters as hard as he can, thereby pushing us all over the place.

 

We have now safely "up-locked" all of the three locks into Gatun lake, which is a huge fresh water lake.  We crossed the lake but around 1430 hours were told we would have to anchor for the night and proceed tomorrow.

 

Annette is ecstatic because a) she was taught the "tugboat bowline" - a knot - and b) she saw and photographed a crocodile in the lake. 

We met up with a boat that left two days ago.  They have been stuck here at the anchorage, so we have invited them to dinner tonight.

So MAYBE tomorrow the Pacific.

We are still here at the Balboa Yacht Club.  It sits just below the Bridge of the America's (The bridge that connects North and South America across the canal).  We looked at the shore and saw a TGI Friday's, so we got cleaned up and got a water taxi to the dock.  Then we had lukewarm burgers, lukewarm onion rings and lukewarm fries.  The beer was cold though.  It was dark when we left the restaurant but we walked up under the bridge.  It was all lit up and very pretty.  Then we headed back to the dock to get a water taxi back to DoodleBug.  A young man on a BMW motorcycle rolled up next to us.  We had met him in Colon at the yacht club, where he was looking for a ride back to San Francisco.  Then we had invited the crew of "Tiki" to join us for supper, when we anchored out on Gatun Lake during the canal transit.  He was crewing for them during their transit and had joined us for supper on DoodleBug.  It just seems like a small world sometimes.

 

The big ships roll by about 50 yards away from where we are moored.  We are right next to a navigation buoy on the Panama canal approach, so there is plenty of traffic.  That is the only negative to being here, since about 30 seconds after their engine noise starts to diminish, their bow wave arrives and throws us all around.  The poodle was still on the deck this morning though.

 

We plan to stay here for a few days.  Find out about French visas, check the weather forecasts, fill up with water and fuel.  Few odd groceries (and beer!).  Then off to Galapagos via the Las Perlas Islands.  We expect to put in at the latter for a couple of days.

Yesterday we got up early.  Annette washed the boat.  I worked on e-mails and modified the GPS with a "stand-alone" power switch, which I have been meaning to do for 6 months.  Then we went off to the French Embassy to retrieve our passports.  We now have 90 day visas for French Polynesia.  After the embassy we went to a fancy "new" shopping mall on the end of a peninsula.  We got there at 10.30 a.m. to use the Internet cafe and get lunch.  Everything was closed and did not officially open until noon.

 

We passed a restaurant that had a waiter setting up tables and asked if they would sell us a couple of beers.  They un-set a table and we sat down to drink our beer.  The owner came over and we started chatting.  They have only been open two months etc.  We said we would drink our beer slowly until noon.  He said we didn't have to wait, so we split an 8 course lunch between the two of us.  That plus 5 beers really hit the spot.  We then waddled back to the boat for a nap.  Tough day in Panama.

Yesterday was a slow day.  We received a note from Amel saying they were shipping our new heat exchanger yesterday but no waybill number.  We got a note from Helen saying that we had another 200 minutes on our Sat phone but when I tested it later, they weren't there.  (I will test again today).  So we slung a Matt & Kari hammock and read books and drank beer / wine.  I cannot remember the last day we had like this.

Today Annette is clipping excess hair off the pup and I will service one of the winches.  This is a messy job and took me a couple of hours the first time I tried this.  There are 11 winches on board and the manufacturer claims that they need to be serviced every couple of months.  This is crap.  There is about 20 hours of labor in this task "every couple of months."  I think most cruisers try to service their winches once a year.

 

We would have gone out to a restaurant to eat last night but someone is having a "fat attack."  We finished all the Xmas cake and I keep getting chastised for mentioning the rum cake we picked up at Grand Cayman.  So instead we fell asleep in front of the "Twin Towers."  How does that end anyway?

 

(Later that day...)

Saturday in Panama was a busy day.  The agent we had hired, said his people would get our part from UPS, cleared through customs, and delivered to us today.  We got up and "struck" our sun shade awnings first thing this morning.  This means "putting them away" for you non-sailor people, the beatings come later.....  A couple of reports ago, we were whining about the black ash here.  We thought they were burning garbage.  It ain't so, they have been burning cane fields.  Everything on the boat has been coated with an interesting layer of black stuff.  We tried to at least wipe some of it off our sun shades before we folded them.  Once we had made our boat mobile again, we motored over to the fueling dock to fill up on diesel, water and beer.  The latter is sold by the case from the fueling dock.

 

Just as we got back to the mooring and as I was maneuvering to pick up the buoy, the agent was calling on the radio to say they had our shipment.  We met on the dock and swapped boat parts and passports, scurried back to the boat, pulled the propane tank we have been using and threw same onto a shuttle boat with Annette to head back to the dock.  She had 30 minutes to make the propane place before they closed for the week-end and then go shopping for the "perishables."  I settled in to a fun four hours of installing the heat exchanger on the transmission in 90 degree temps.

The heat exchanger is cooled by salt water and so it is a really good idea if it doesn't leak. The connections for the hydraulic hoses were very tight, sealed with some kind of joint seal and both pointing the wrong way. The brackets that hold the cooler in position were held by two bolts. Each bolt had two washers and a self locking nut. Almost impossible to get at and I had to hold top and bottom. A lot of swearing went into this. Then the hose clamps.  There is a tapered rubber thing at each end of the cooler. On one end, every time I tightened the clamp, the hose would just squeeze out from underneath it. It would "walk" over 1/4 inch while I watched it. I finally got two wide American clamps with little diagonal slots for the clamping screw and joined them together to make one big one. So far everything is working again.

We both lived through the various experiences but this is one time I would rather have gone shopping.

The heat exchanger is installed (with much swearing and blood spilled), the groceries are mostly put away and the agent showed up with our passports stamped for exit (and his bill of course). We will go through our own departure checklist Sunday morning and set sail for the Las Perlas Islands.  The place we are going is only 40 miles or so away from here, so if we get an early start we will get there in daylight.