We arrived in Colon yesterday evening 23:00. We have anchored out on the flats (F anchorage for small craft) where it is empty. A single other cruising boat is anchored here and two Dutch tug boats. Today we will get fuel and water and some mail at the Shelter Bay marina on the other side of the bay. We will see if there is a berth available and stay for a day or two to get cleared into Panama and collect some mail. If there is no berth available we have to decide whether to anchor of the Colon Nautico yacht club and to do the clearance or sail to San Blas and do the clearance in Porvenir. One month ago a cruiser was boarded in the night and tied and robbed on board while anchored in front the Nautico yachtclub, hence we are not too keen in anchoring there. The trip went well, except for several hours approximately half way where the winds became calm and a terrible cross sea existed. I guess it must have been the waves pushed up by the North wind fighting the normally Eastern swell. The cross sea was terrible and throwed the boat around. While downwind with most of the swell in the aft quarter, small breaking waves would hit the boat with terrible noise on the side, spraying the decks and the cockpit and everyone in it with seawater over and again. Auke who did well so far without his seasickness pills got seasick then and there and I got into a bad mood after several hours of trying to get the boat steady and sailing again. Nothing seemed to work to get the boat stable and sailing again, and after 4 hours trying in all darkness with all types of sail set ups, I gave up and went to bed for some hours sleep. In the morning we tried again and then as suddenly as we had got it the terrible cross sea disappeared and the boat started sailing again, with the jib poled out to one side and full main fixed out to the other side making good 5 knots in 15 knots true winds. Auke started to get over his seasickness again and as always the bodies of those little ones go in some kind of recovery mode and get an appetite which for a parent you are nearly not able to satisfy. In those recovery modes as parent you are busy preparing bread with cheese, popcorn, anything savory is demanded by the little boy who just eats it up as if he had not eaten in weeks. He was most unhappy we could not make him french fries while at sea, as that would have been very nice according him. At 23:00 we were in between the breakwaters among the big ships. Although very busy with big ships naturally, all heading for and coming from the Panama Canal, it is an easy entrance, wide and as long you stay in contact with Christobal port control (Christobal Signal Station) and out of the fairway you will have no problems. The A IS receiver as I expected you can switch off as we had over 280 filtered targets. With so many filtered targets and ships moving around, you always have several active targets at any one time while heading onto the anchorage in front of Colon and inside the breakwaters , causing alarm on the AIS receiver, even while we have our alarm trigger values set really tight. But with the AIS switched off, with a good pair of eyes (Heloisa) in the cockpit and radar it is no problem approaching Colon at darkness.

On average we did 5.6 Nm per hour which is not bad for this old lady sailing downwind considering we had those 6 hours of calms with terrible cross seas in where the boat speed was not above the 3 knots. Today we eat fresh fish, a dorado we caught several hours after departing San Andres and which Heloisa quickly got cleaned up and cut up in filets and are now stored in our fridge and mini freezer compartment. Great!



Al well with boat and crew.