15^th February

Left Portobello for Shelter Bay Marina, Colon at the entrance to Panama Canal.

16^th February. Ad measurers came on board to measure Oyster Moon for passage through Panama canal. We have all been measured now and we are waiting transit date.

17^th February. Annie, Vibeka, Julia, Oscar and I caught free marina bus to supermarket. Took over an hour and the bus was crowded. Problem solved on getting back to marina with shopping by being brought back in the supermarket transit van. Vibeka, Oscar and I sat on plastic crates on a leather covered foam sponge in the back of the van, Annie sat in front with anti-social driver. Every time she tried to talk to him he turned the radio up! It was probably his favourite programme Annie. The entire floor was covered in bags of shopping. We spent over 2000$ between us. We then had to lug all the shopping to boats and load it on board. And where were the boys? They had a pretty disastrous trip to chandlers. The minibus coming to take them got a flat tyre about 10km from the marina and carried no spare. They waited another 3 hours for alternative transport to arrive. It then took them over 2 hours to get to chandlers – which was rubbish – and only open for another hour. They finally got back at 8pm.

In order to get to supermarket and chandlers had to go across the Panama Canal.  Vehicles drive across the closed lock gates – bit of a problem when open.  Queue waiting for lock gates to close:

Ship in the canal:

Ship coming down through the lock.  The two escalators in middle left are the railway tracks for the trains that pull the big ships from lock to lock. 

The lock gates:

Paul’s knee:

18^th February

Transit date was 24^th, now appears to be 25^th and tomorrow it will be another date. Getting pretty frustrated as we are all raring to go now. Paul has suggested that we sail back to Bonaire.  Ha ha Paul.

This is mega con country as well. We have shelled out $ when we did not apparently need to. 10$ to customs man who is on the take, now they want 110$ for a visa etc. etc. Paul fitting anchor roller onto stern since we will need stern and bow anchors in Galapagos.