26-27 July 2012

26/6/2012
Position 14:00 UTC -4 05 10.178N 081 27.499W
Progress is slow. Downloaded a new Grib chart - got to stop going westor we
will never get to Galapagos, so now pushing to get south of the equator when
we should be able to reach to Galapagos.
27/6/2012
Position 14:00 UTC -4 03 32.224N 082 21.789W
Passed Ilsa du Medpedlo around 03:30 about 10nm to port. At sun rise the
clouds conveniently cleared on the horizon and there we could see the twin
humps of the island about 33nm north of us. The starboard motor starting
surging so changed the fuel filter. Somewhere we picked up a lot of dirt.
We are having to motor using both engines as we are battling the current and
head winds. Sorry Ian we are using an awful lot of diesel. But we are
getting to the end of the ITCZ (dolrums) and then hopefully we will be
sailing.
Cheers
Chris

22-25 June 2012

22/6/2012


The time has at last arrived for us to transit the canal. Roy Bravo brought
the two extra line handlers at about 14:30, so we cast off from the finger
and set off to the 'Flats Anchorage'. Trying to anchored proved interesting
when the windlass won't work. Turned out not to be a problem as all it to be
was the overload switch, but just as we had sorted it out the Advisor,
Fernando, arrived and off we set for the first of the Gatun locks. We were
rafted up to another catamaran and entered the lock behind a cargo boat -
one of the smaller ones compared to the Panamax vessels, which filled the
lock completely. The lock is 110ft wide the Panmax are 105ft beam. Rafting
up released Rob and George from line handling so they were taking pictures.
There was quite a surge as the water flooded into the lock, which kept the
line handlers on their toes. Otherwise it was a simple task repeated three
times until we emerged into Lake Gatun and tied up for the night to buoy - a
large rubber one with us on one side and our companion cat on the other
side. We gave our advisor supper then he left saying a new advisor would be
along at 06:30 tomorrow.


23/6/2012


At 06:30 on the dot the new advisor, Roy, arrived and he wasted no time
getting us going. We motored along the marked channel passed lots of islands
thickly vegetated. Gatun Lake was the largest manmade lake at the time it
was built. Recreational use is allowed, so long as you keep out of the way
of the shipping lanes and apparently there is some good fishing.

It took us about five and a bit hours to get to the Pedro Miguel Lock. We
were loaded in with only a ferry boat and the two cats rafted together, the
lock looked very empty. The ferry went longside while we sat in the middle
with lines out either side. The drop was a lot less turbulent than the way
up. Our advisor decided to change our loading for the Miraflores Locks. So
instead of having our line handlers holding us in the middle we rafted up to
the ferry boat. What simple solution. The exit from the last lock was a
little more exciting as the freshwater mixes with the salt it causes quite a
bit a turbulence. Once passed the bridge of the Americas we dropped Roy and
at Balboa Yacht club we dropped the line handlers together with the lines
and tyres and motored on to the Galapagos, dodging many ships anchored off
Panama City.


24/6/2012


Position 14:00 UTC +4 07 54.492N 079 21.633W

Motored all night until the early hours of the morning when we set the genny
in about 10knots of SW wind and even put the main up about 08:30. It didn't
last for long though as the wind backed by 13:30 straight on the nose.
Downed all sails just in time for a squall which brought lots of rain and
wind from the east. For two hours with just the genny, we had an exciting
ride in near storm conditions, with wind gusting up to 24knots. But all good
things come to an end and we were left with a bumpy sea and little wind.


25/6/2012


Position 14:00 UTC +4 05 56.082N 080 10.396W

The sea flatten out which made life far more pleasant, with no wind. Pointed
the bow at Galapagos and enjoyed the peace. During the night while I was on
watch I noticed a red flashing light hovering around off to starboard. It
would move towards a ship ahead of us then go back and eventually circle us
before disappearing altogether. As we are off the coast of Colombia I came
to the conclusion it was either drug smugglers or anti drug smugglers. It
was a helicopter.

Again at just after 14:00 a wind from the east appeared but with little rain
this time. Lets see if this is a pattern.

Cheers

Chris

19-21 June in Shelter Bay

Hi All,

19/6/2012

In Shelter Bay.

Rob and I went back into town on the 08:00 bus, primarily to get the rest of the food and some US$ for the Pacific crossing. When we got to the shopping mall that we went to yesterday we took a taxi into downtown Colon to the National Bank. That was a mistake because they don't speak much English and they don't have facilities to do transactions with foreign banks.

Fortunately for us there was one of the Marina employees in the bank, who recognised us and came to our rescue. He then loaded us into his car and drove us to the Free Zone and the HBSC bank. Thank goodness for him because downtown Colon doesn't look the safest place to wander round standing out like a sore thumb.

I got sorted at HBSC but Rob could not change his old travellers cheques. As the bus was not returning to Shelter Bay until 15:30 we wandered around the free zone. Most businesses only cater for the wholesale trade, but now and again there were shops catering to the retail trade. In one clothing shop which had a good line of shorts, but we could only buy 6000 pairs minimum.

Eventually we tired of looking in shops and took a taxi back to the shopping mall and had to waste time waiting for the bus and completing our food shop.

In the end the bus didn't arrive and we shared a taxi back to Shelter Bay.

20/6/2012

In Shelter Bay.

I spent the day loading the new charts from PC Marine and refining our passage plan. We only need to fuel up and we are set to go. Rob wandered off and found a beach in front of what I assume were the married quarters for the US military when they were here. The whole US military facility is not being use by the Panamanians and is slowly falling in to total disrepair.

Rob went snorkelling and found some old coral and some colourful fish.

Nothing fantastic.

21/6/2012

Still in Shelter Bay.

Roy Bravo sent me our transit schedule. The advisor (pilot) will board at

17:00 at the Flats anchorage and we will transit the Gatun locks that evening, anchoring or tied to a buoy near the entrance to Gatun Lake. Time to fuel up and ready to go.

Tomorrow is the day

Cheers

Chris

18 June

18/6/2012
In Shelter Bay
The bus runs today. It will take us to a shopping mall. 08:00 the bus
departs from the marina and returns at 11:15 from the shopping mall. I
wanted some extra US$ but the banks there were not equipped to handle
foreign transactions. So will have to go to a central bank tomorrow. However
we did a shop at Reys which we will have to top up tomorrow as we ran out of
time. Fortunately the shop delivered all our shopping - the bus wasn't big
enough.
Now we wait for the tyres and ropes for the transit. Roy Bravo, our agent,
has been pushing for an earlier transit, but apparently there has been
maintenance on one set of locks causing a backlog and then the canal
authority is short staffed when it comes to advisors (pilot). So we wait.

Cheers

Chris

At Shelter Bay Marina

Hi All,

16/6/2012

At Shelter Bay Marina

Early morning excitement was a alligator - not that big less than 2m - swimming amongst the boats.

Got booked in at the marina office and can now connect to the internet via WiFi. The Admearsurer - the person who measured your boat and takes all the details they require to slot you into the transit programme - arrived around 12:00, measured up the boat and filled in lots of forms. Our Agent, Roy Bravo, arrived a little later while I was busy with the dock master. He soon put the dock master to rights about our transit status and avoided the extra costs associated with him.

Rob and I took a lift from Roy to the canal. We paid our $5 and were able to watch ships passing through the Gatun locks into the Caribbean Sea. It was interesting to see the effect of the water flooding the lower lock.

Initially the turbulence caused by the in-coming water is sever but slacks off as the water level rises. For us this could be an interesting time.

Guess the line handlers will have to hang on tight.

So we wait for our allocation of transit - hopefully early next week. We plan to stock up here and not stop at Panama City.

17/6/2012

In Shelter Bay

Roy Bravo has advised us that we will transit on the 22nd. So we will stock up take fuel, transit and continue on our way.

Rob comes up with all sorts of hair brain schemes when in port. Today he wants to hire a bicycle and ride to San Lorenzo - a distance of about 9 miles through the jungle. Somehow he persuaded me to join him. So we duly hired two bikes from the Dock Shop a set off to San Lorenzo. San Lorenzo is in a National Park. The road looks flat but it has a habit of rising steadily if not steeply and in the heat that soon puts the pressure on. It took us about two hours to get to San Lorenzo, which is an old Spanish fort built in 1620 to protect the export route for the treasures plundered by the Spanish from Peru etc. The Chagres River was the main route for these exports and it enters the sea at San Lorenzo. The Chagres River was dammed to form the Gatun Lake, which provides all the water for the locks. Strange fort, its sits quite high above the sea but only has two batteries facing the sea while there are four facing the land. If the jungle that is there now was there 400 years ago, I don't know how anyone could have mounted a serious attack from the land.

From the fort we made our way down to a small beach round the corner from the fort. Lots of flotsam on the beach and no waves and very warm water.

However it provided a good rest from riding and the heat. The only drawback was the that we now had to climb the hill back to the main road. We both gave in and pushed. Once back on the main road things became a lot easier and we got back to Shelter Bay quite quickly. Three beers disappeared remarkably quickly, the a swim and finally I am just about human again.

Cheers

Chris

Arrived Shelter Bay, Panama (Rob Browne)

We reached the most northerly point on our trip on Monday 11 June at

13 degrees 57 minutes North 71 degrees 43 minutes West – about 120 nautical miles north of the northern coast of South America above the Gulf of Venezuela where Columbia and Venezuela meet - gybed to port and continued on to Shelter Bay on the Caribbean side of the Panama Cannel where we are moored at present. There are hundereds of mosquitoes here.

The paper work to transit the cannel is quite horrific. Thankfully we have an agent assisting us.  The Canal Authorities came and check out the boat and measured it and have given us the OK to go through. Seems they are doing quite a bit of maintainance on the locks which is supposed to finish today, Sunday. This week they have only been using one of the two channels which has reduced the number of boats which have gone through. Ther were over 40 big ships waiting outside the breakwater at the start of the canal when we arrived. So hopefully they will be back to normal next week. The agent has arranged with the scheduler for us to go through on Friday 22nd June so we still have another four days to kill. That is unless a spot comes vacant due to a cancellation. So we are all hoping we will get through earlier. When there is enough space behind a big ship they raft up 3 yachts together and slip them into the locks.

Apart from the last two days on this leg we had good winds since we left Trinidad on the evening of Wednesday 6 th June. The wind averaged in the low twenties with the odd gust above thirty and we made good time getting up to 150 nautical miles a day.

All of a sudden everything came together in Chaquaramas, Trinidad, on the Wednesday afternoon, maybe because the Thursday was a public holiday in Trinidad, which was great for us as once the fibreglass repairs to the starboard rudder were dry and the new port saildrive had been installed and after a quick sea test we cleared customs and immigration, filled up with diesel and were on our way through the channel aptly named The Dragon’s Mouth ( The one at the bottom of Trinidad is called the Serpent’s Head).  This was all very fortunate as as you know sailors never leave a port on a Friday.

Joyce and I had earlier in the day paid a visit to the local supermarket and stocked up on food and beer. Lots of things we are not used to on offer like goat meat which was the most expensive cut of meat at R100 a kg. We stuck to beef mince at R45 a kg. A different price structure too with packets of jelly costing R13 while a tin of beer cost half that. Not much fresh fruit or veg available although we did buy some super bananas from a road side stall. Schweppes bottles a magic grapefruit fizzy drink that is not too bitter, something like dry lemon which is very refreshing as it has been extremely hot on this leg and very humid. Not much rain except for the few odd drops so the boat was very sticky to the touch and slippery in parts. We were also very sticky and it does not take long after a wash before you are full of salt again. On the last night before we arrived there was a humungus electrical storm and lots of rain  but we were all asleep except for George who had to battle it out. Stupid flying fish also keep jumping onto the boat, one hit me on the sholder on his way into the cockpit. Chris counted 16 on thetrampoline one morning.

While the wind has been good to us they had also swept up the sea and it has been very lumpy. Not nice on the cat as it slams down as each wave passes by sending things flying and keeping us awake when we try to get some sleep. Also because the sea is splashing about we could not open our cabin hatches which makes the cabins very stuffy.

Fortunately this has been one of the shortest legs on the trip totalling only approximately 1200 nautical miles and taken 8 days so we have survived. The new saildrive is going great guns and we have been using the port engine rather than the starboard one to even out the hours each one has been running and because George noticed that the starboard engine which was serviced in Trinidad is leaking a bit of diesel. Not much so no big deal and Chris sorted it out here.

There is a good resturant in the marina here with a two hour happy hour from 5 to 7 pm Monday to Saturday with all local beers US$1 each which we have taken advantage of.  The first two after our shower on arrival did not even touch sides. The mosquitoes when we got back to the boat were a bit of a shock. There a masses of them but they are very lethargic and easy to swot. Must be the heat and humidity. Tabard seems to keep them from biting us but they buzz about all night. On Saturday afternoon the agent was very helpfull and even gave Chris and me a lift down to the locks on the Caribbean side to watch two huge ships pass through. There was not even 6 inches to spare on either side as they passed through. Everyone here seems to take it easy on Sundays so we followed suit and Chris and I hired bikes and cycled about 12km to the ruins of an old Spanish Fort which was attacked by Francis Drake and Henry Morgan after which we had a swim in the Caribbean.

Tomorrow we are going into Colon to get as much of the supplies as we can for the trip across the Pacific. The supermarkets here are suppose to be good as there is still a big american influance in the canal zone.We are theoritically in transit and not in Panama so once we are through the canal we will not be stopping in Panama City but be straight on our way to the Galapagos.

For those of you who are not on Facebook or may not have got a notification, I posted some photos on Facebook of our trip so far while I was in Chaquaramas. They are in the public domain so even if you are not a Facebook used you can access them by going to the Facebook site and typing in Rob Browne, Hout Bay. Don’t forget the ‘e’

otherwise hundreds of Rob Brown’s will come up. Then go to the photos section of my page.

Cheers

Rob

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Arriving at Shelter Bay

15/6/2012

Position 14:00 UTC -4  09 34.454N 079 43.130W

05:00 George was treated to an electric storm of note. Lightening flashing all round and the wind got up too. When things had calmed down we found we had a 3-4 knot current against us - we just don't seem to have any luck with currents - with a COG of 2knots we were due to get to Shelter Bay on Saturday. So started both motors and pushed the revs up to give us 7-8knots through the water and about 5knots COG. Still our predicted lunch time arrival was not realised. We finally tied up in Shelter Bay Marina at 16:15.

What a lovely marina, miles away from Colon, but backs on to a jungle nature reserve. What bliss to shower and sip cold beers in the air-conditioned bar.

Waiting for the ad-measurer to come and get us set for the transit.

Cheers

Chris