15th February
Left Portobello for Shelter Bay Marina, Colon at the
entrance to Panama Canal.
16th 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.
17th 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:
18th February
Transit date was 24th, now appears to be
25th 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.
