Hi Everyone

 

We are safely moored up in Shelter Bay in Panama now after a good trip from Hollandes Cay in St Blas. The St Blas were very beautiful, and we wished we could have stayed much longer than we did - just for 2 days and one night.  We arrived after an overnight trip, but early - off the harbour entrance shortly before dawn, a small nightmare with all these huge ships moving around manoeuvring to go into the canal, never was I more pleased for dawn to break!!!  We scuttled into the harbour entrance between a huge tanker and a container ship -  here steam does not give way to sail!! nor do yachts get any precedence at all in the entrance - "proceed with caution" is the advice we get from harbour control!!

 

Whilst on passage we've noticed the rough seas as we were advised, but fortunately we had no bad incidents ourselves, however other boats were not so fortunate, and had a few incidents - " one boat "Hakuna Matata" went aground on the reef at Snug Harbour - well to the east of us - but no thankfully no great damage, and they got off OK with some Kuna indian help. Another boat "Shaula 3" got knocked down flat on their side and took in a load of water on their electrics, and Barbara went over the back, she was strapped on, hanging on, and Gianfranco helped her back on board, fortunately other than a lot of bruises both are OK, albeit a little shocked. The boat fared less well - it needs a fair amount of work - mast spreaders bent and a lot of electrics to sort - but work underway as we speak.  We too saw large waves too but were lucky, and the boat seems to bob over as they pass beneath us, albeit a 10metre "biggy" gave me a few jitters until that too passed underneath, at night its a different matter, the Shaula 3 incident took place at night and they saw nothing until it happened.

 

We've visited the canal which is an amazing sight, even at 100 years old its an impressive engineering achievement. We've also visited Fort Lorenzo, built to fight off English pirates plundering the gold galleons bound for Spain - its dilapidated now and its been blown up and rebuilt twice in the past!! On our way we passed through Colon the city nearby  - I've never seen such poverty before - and we don't go to Colon on our own without being "sensible" with belongings, and never at night - its mugging and pickpocketing that's rife but the authorities are trying to reduce all this and improve the town, we're told over 50% of the population exist on under 2 dollars a day, with 20% unemployment.

 

We got "measured" for our transit through the canal yesterday -  not that I saw much as I was stripping down the generator all day - half way there but need a few more hours to se if its fixed with the new controller board. We transit the Panama canal on 27th/28th, I understand there are cameras on the canal locks, viewable via the Panama canal web site - we transit the first locks, the Panama locks up to the Gatun lake between 18.00 and 20.00 on 27th (23.00-0100 UK time), we expect to travel to the Pacific locks 13.00 - 15.00 (18.00 - 20.00 UK) on 28th, we should be on camera! (unless a big bird perches in front of it - seriously - it happens!!)

 

Pacific bound !!