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.