06/03/2010, London
Gatun Locks, Panama
We have crossed the Caribbean Sea! Queen's Ransom is no longer in the West Indies, but in Panama, Central America. She has visited South America; quite far away from her English Channel and North Sea stomping ground, not to mention her past two journeys to Norway.
Hans, Sven and I spent eight days at sea divided into three legs: Sint Maarten to Aruba, then Cartagena and finally to Panama. We had very good following winds on the first leg. The other two involved a mix of sailing and motoring to keep up with our tight time schedule. We covered a distance of 1285.3 nautical miles. Ashore, we spent 24 hours on Aruba and 48 hours at Cartagena.
The sailing highlights were that we felt more comfortable sailing with the spinnaker and the exhilirating downwind sailing of the first leg. Among places visited Cartagena stood out as the winner. Quite unusual for us to visit a major city as a sailing destination. Aruba, also called "One Happy Island" (with an interesting twist to emphasise community), was as commercialised as we had expected; you could have been in the US. Panama is a curious mix of rainforest and pristine cays and coves, which we mainly saw at a distance, with the roughness of South American frontier towns.
It took some time to settle into the sea routine. We ran our daily watch schedule and other routines, but in a less regimented fashion than across the Atlantic. The heat was a continous factor of discomfort. We ate extremely well and enjoyed our aft deck pre-dinner drinks and forays ashore. We got little sleep regardless of being at sea or onshore.
The stress of getting everything ready for departing and shutting down the boat again is legendary. I only got less than three hours sleep the last night. The departures are certainly better prepared than in the past and can certainly be done quicker, but less stressful? No!
As always, we had our share of equipment failures; in particular electricity charging and the gennaker. The generator refused to start before we even left the dock at Sint Maarten. Bad repairs was most likely the cause of the problem with the screw controlling its speed being sheared off and at the same time causing a fuel leak. During service, the fuel filter had been put back in a slightly incorrect position causing the screw being caught by a fuel hose. The other problem was a wire that got caught up by a belt stopping the main engine to charge the batteries. However, an absolut highlight was our self suffiency to repair these two problems at sea.
The gennaker was ripped for possible no other reason than old age, but it had just been returned from the local sailmaker at St Lucia. A few other things on the technical front continue to nag such as the cockpit VHF failure. The only scary moment was that Sven got burned with some boiling water while making coffee. It was the first time that the huge medical chest, "the Sea Medic" was put into use.
Captain Hastings and his crew are now settling into their adopted home country for the next six and a half months; Panama. Shelter Bay Marina is a nice place; small scale, well fitted out and at an excellent spot in the remote rainforest. I am sure Captain Hastings will relish its closeness to a major shipping lane and other sea folks.
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05/29/2010, Shelter Bay, Colon, Panama
When I woke up on Sunday morning, we could see the high mountains (one thousand metres) of Panama to our South. We headed West and more and more converged with the coast. There are plenty of very beautiful coves and cays here; a stretch that Imelda, the children and I will explore on our way to the San Blas Islands. It is a remote place that only slowely gets discovered.
The wind was completely gone and it felt hotter than ever! We stopped Queenie for a refreshing swim in the sea despite the sea temperature of 29 degrees. We drifted ENE at 0.8 knots with the Equatorial Counter Current. However, our drift was the same as the boat's.
We quickly approached the opening of the breakwater of Colon / Cristobal harbour and the Atlantic opening of the Panama Canal. It was slightly confusing as we approached; not helped by a partly faulty VHF system and not knowing who controlled the traffic and the rules of the approach. I was later to understand it is Cristobal Signal Station that controls the movements; fantastic name isn't it old fashioned signal stations just like at Bridgetown, Barbados, not VTSs (the modern "Vessel Traffic Schemes").
We made the last mile along the inside of the Western brakewater passing by lots of anchored ships into the little corner called Shelter Bay. It is a remarkable location both just a mile or two from the one of the most important cross roads of the world, but also immensely remote in the rainforest and kilometers away from the next settlement. Shelter Bay Marina is built at the former US Military Base Sherman and some of its scattered buildings are slowely being reclaimed by the rainforest.
It is something special to arrive at a legendary cross road. The Panama Canal is one of the most important of those. There is an immense amount of shipping around. I think we have more AIS targets (i e ships popping up on our "Automatic Identification System") here than in the English Channel.
It was a mistake to think that we smoothly could clear into Panama on a Sunday. We kept the time schedule, but it was going to be both time consuming and expensive. We got conflicting advice from all parties we spoke to. However, we had soon appointed a Shipping Agent.
As our taxi scuttled past the massive Gatun locks; I felt the significance of the place. It is a master piece of engineering and of key importance for trade. It is either here or around Cape Horn you pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific; barring the North West Passage. The taxi continue to speed pass the rough down town of Christobal and through the military road blocks into the harbour. We had arrived at Fenton's Ship Agency. We were very well received and one of the most curious things was that they didn't want to charge a fixed price for their services. It was up to us to tip.
The ship agent was going to wisk us through eeriely empty (on a Sunday) harbour offices, walk us around the rough streets of Cristobal in search of a working ATM to get some more US dollars. It was a bizarre experience meeting officials called out this Sunday to help us (but also asking one nonsense question after another for bureacracy's sake) in a an equally bizarre setting of these massive docks. It got dark before we had returned to Shelter Bay and could start the real work of shutting down the boat.
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05/29/2010, Off the coast of Panama
Jumping from the aft-deck in the crystal clear and blue Caribbean Sea
Today is our last "sailing" day. Again only in the night we have had some decent winds to set sail. With sunrise the wind vanished: we are motoring towards Panama, towards Colon, where we hopefully arrive around 14h.
The Panama coast is 10 NM away, a hilly coast covered with the green of rainforests. So much differentthan yesterday, when we only saw see, clouds, and the sun.
The sea was crystal clear however, and very, very, blue. She was inviting us for an afterlunch swim. We enjoyed the refreshing swim a lot. Although the seawater temperature was well above 29 centigrade.
After the swim we motored again. While Ulric was cleaning and polishing his tools, Sven and I were reading the tourist-guides of Panama that we have on board.
Particularly the Colon district, where Queenie will be berthed in Shelter Bay Marina, we looked for something nice to do. One of the first things that caught my notice was that Panama has no real currency! Since 1904 they haven't printed a single banknote, they only have some small coins that exist next to their adopted currency the US dollar, which, as well, can also be denominated as the Panama dollar, a bananarepublican dollar.
The city of Colon we will not see much of: "Colon's reputation throughout the rest of the country for violent crime is not undeserved, and if you come here you should exercise extreme caution - mugging, even in broad daylight, does happen. Don't carry anything around you you can't afford to lose, try to stay in sight of the police in the main street and take taxis whenever possible" (citation: The rough guide to Central America on a budget).
It seems that there is not much interesting so close to the marina that we can spend some time on it.
After dinner we celebrated our last night at sea during this trip: beer, white wine, coffee, whiskey, and whisky. Sven even got me to smoke a cigar: I smoked only half of it, the rest was for the dolphins. Music on the aft-deck and the cockpit under the warm blanket of the tropical night. Until we woke up from a rain shower! Refreshing, but more interesting: with the rain also the wind returned so that at least during our last night we could set sail for the final leg.
Hans
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