Panama canal and city
Exocet Strike
John & Stella Dyer
Sun 8 Feb 2015 16:56
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Since leaving Shelter Bay on the Caribbean /
Atlantic side our wifi has been near useless so apologies for no
updates.
The tranist trhough the canal was amazing, we were
late getting into the Gatun locks, by nearly two hours but it was a fantastic
experience, the Advisors which go on each boat are often tugboat captains, ours
certainly was on day two.
After going through we tied up at midnight to a big
mooring buoy, in a raft of 6 boats, then next morning at 0630 we headed off
through the Gatun lake, a huge man made lake, created by damming the river
Chagres. took about four hours to reach the Pedro \migul lock, approx 1200 local
time and then onto Miraflores soon after. Some near disasters quickly averted,
and down to the marina at La Playita. Its a very small marina so we had to
anchor in the bay to await our turn, two days later. Its all motor boats
in there, but the staff were very friendly, and the power and water were useful.
We went on a trip called a city tour, but actually
we went over the Centenial Bridge and up to the highest point in Panama City to
see over the canal and city, pretty spectacular. Then down to the very old city,
now abandoned after the Pirate Captain Morgan sacked it many centuries ago and
then into the old town. All very interesting and starting to be
refurbished.
We thought of buying some solar panels, but after
deciding that the place we were going to put them was needed, we chose not
to.
Saturday was when we had to check out of the marina
and we decided to sail off at midday to the Las Perlas islands, and Contadura in
particular. Got there to the ancorage just as it was going dark. great
timiing. On our way there we saw two pods of Dolphins and then one or two
whales, not sure waht type of whale or how big, but pretty close to us and maybe
30 feet in length, so our third set of whales so far.
Crusing around the Las Perlas islands until Friday
then we are off to Galapagos.
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