Laurent, the dogs and I have left the boat in Bocas del Toro and are now in France. We'll be in Europe until mid September when we return to the boat and continue our trip.

We wish all our friends a nice summer without hurricanes!

The Panama Canal

On Thursday last week it was finally our turn to transit the Panama Canal.

Each boat is required to have a captain plus four people to handle the lines, so we asked our friend Leo and 3 of his friends to come and help us.

At 6:00 in the morning we were ready to pick up our pilot outside the Balboa Yacht club, and at 8:30 he finally came on board. We proceeded to the first lock, where they kept us waiting another two and a half hours before we finally got clearance to start.

We had hoped to be rafted with a couple of other boats, but were told to go through the locks center chamber, alone. In front of us we had another sailboat and a sport fishing boat.

We went into the first lock, the water came in and we were lifted 16 meters before we proceeded into the next lock and repeated the procedure. After the second Miraflores lock there was a one mile passage to the third lock called Pedro Miguel.

By the time we came out of the third lock and crossed the Gatun lake it was late afternoon, and we were told to spend the night tied up to a buy in front of the Gatun locks on the Atlantic side.

At 10 the next morning we got clearance to enter the first Gatun lock, and started our trip down to the Atlantic Ocean. We exited the third and last lock about an hour later and went straight to Shelter Bay Marina where we said goodbye to Leo and co.

We stayed two days in the marina and then set off towards Bocas del Torro.

It took us 24 hours to get to Bocas, and for the first time in ages we were just the two of us and the dogs onboard.

We are now anchored right outside Bocas Town, close enough to hear the live jazz music from one of the bars in town.

In a couple of days we'll go and explore some of the other islands in the area, there are a lot of beautiful islands around and most of them are uninhabited.

We're happy to be in the Atlantic Ocean again, and enjoy the clear warm water and beautiful coral reefs around. Time to go diving again...

Some more pics from Panama

We are still in Panama City waiting for the canal authorities to tell us when we can transit the canal. They say they have a shortage of canal pilots, so it may take another week or so. So we wait...

Panama City and Las Perlas

We arrived in Panama City on the 22nd of April, just in time to pick up our friend Ann who arrived from Minneapolis one hour after we pulled into the slip in Marina La Playita.

We had a bit of a rough trip from Golfito to Panama City, especially the area around Punta Mala caused some big waves and gusts of 35 knots of wind for 24 hrs.

After arriving we spend 2 days in Panama City, and then we went out to cruise the Las Perlas Islands for one week. The islands are very beautiful and most of them are uninhabited and fringed by the most amazing white sandy beaches. And there are absolutely no people anywhere, we were the only boat in most of the places we anchored.

We bought cheap lobster and prawns from the local fishermen almost every day and had a great time cruising the islands. The weather was hot and humid, and we had a squall almost every afternoon or evening.

One week ago we returned to Panama City, where we said goodbye to Ann whoe went back to the states and Mike who returned to Playa del Carmen.

We have spend the last week doing some repairs on the boat, changing our battery bank and alternator and preparing for the canal transit.

At the moment it looks like we'll transit Tuesday or Wednesday, and we haven't decided what to do once we get to the Atlantic side. Still cinsidering our options.

Costa Rica

Our first stop in Costa Rica was Playa del Coco, in the Papagayo Bay. We spend 3 days there, mostly scuba diving, and exploring the surroundings. It's a nice little town, but complicated to go to shore since you can not leave the dinghy on the beach without getting it stolen.

Anyway, we had a good time, did some nice dives, finished the open water and rescue diver courses and said goodbye to Johanne and Martin.

After they left we spend a night in marina Papagayo 4 miles away to clean the boat and fix a few things before continuing. It is a beautiful marina with facilities like a 5 star hotel.

We then sailed for 2 days before arriving in Quepos where we had planned to check out of the country, but no one was working in the customs and immigrations offices because of Semana Santa (easter week). So we had t continue to Golfito, where we arrived this morning and got all the official paper works necessary to clear out taken care of. Took us only 3 hours.

Golfito is a very pretty little place, surrounded to all sides by tropical green rainforest. It looks like we might get some rain for the first time in maybe 8 months, the rainy season is just starting here.

We are now relaxing and catching up on some much needed sleep before leaving Costa Rica early tomorrow morning to be able to arrive in Panama City Friday evening.

El Salvador

Here we are crossing the sand bar and surf to get into Marina Bahia del Sol. Very interesting experience, hope it will be a little more calm when we leave tomorrow. We have 250 miles to go to Bahia Papagayo in Costa Rica where we'll stop next. Should take us no more than 2 days to get there.

3 days ago we arrived in El Salvador after just over 3 days sailing (motoring mostly) from Huatulco. It was an uneventful stretch right up until we arrived to the place we had been told to meet the pilot boat assigned to guide us over the sandbanks and into marina Bahia del Sol.

From there we had to go straight thrue a crazy surf and 3 meter waves, while trying to avoid getting pushed to the shallow part of the bank where there was high risk of going aground.

We made it thrue safely, though it required a bit of cleaning inside the boat afterwards. We thought we had secured everything, but many things still fell down. Now we know what to secure before our departure tomorrow.

The place here is very nice, it's a little hotel and Marina in an estuary in the middle of the jungle. The nearest village is 4 miles up the river by dinghy.

Yesterday we all hired a van with driver and went into San Salvador for some shopping, haircuts etc. The capital is 85 km from the marina, it is mostly very poor and polluted but it has a few nice spots also. One of the highlights was the huge open air market, where you can buy just about everything you can imagine for one dollar.

The climate here is hot and very humid, and we spend the afternoons lazing by the pool side drinking the local one-dollar beer, Pilsener.

Our next stop will be Costa Rica, it should only take us 2 days to arrive in Papagayo where we will stop to clear into the country.