WOW! Sleep! What a concept! We both slept like babies, and didn't get up 'til way after sun up! Basically hung around and visited w/ George & Janet, George's brother Ted, & his 2 young adult children who are visiting & going through the canal w/ them. Super nice family! Even though we had wanted to go through the canal several days ago, we are so very glad we were able to buddy boat w/ Claire de Lune. It's times like this that I feel things happen for a reason & we don't always know what's best, that God does & he is working for us in all things. The boat Sheli, chose to anchor off the moorings a bit ways off from us. About 11, since our advisors we're not arriving yet, and we saw no signs of them, Jim radioed for an update. "Your advisor will be arriving at 14:15 and you have a 15:15 lock time". Ya know, I really hate being out of control!!! At the hands & mercy of others! But it's not like we can call the ACP & tell them, "No, sorry, that's not acceptable, we're going through now, like it or not!" So we sit, we wait, & I try real hard to stay positive. I am all for when I get a setback, to try to believe, everything happens for a reason, & is for the best, and maybe this will just give us a better start wind or something. Just something to help me be able to "let it go". But I still really hate being in no control of things!
At 1:00, so an hour & ½ EARLY, our advisor, Jose', arrives. Jim is right in the middle of a project replacing our back forestay cable. When Jose' arrives though, he tells us that we are not transiting through the remaining canal until 4:15, then a while later, it's pushed back again to 4:50. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit w/ Jose' for the remainder of the afternoon, talking about everything from Religion- yes, he's Catholic, politics, recreation, the canal, etc. But we're still wanting to get going. Once we get through the canal we need to drop off Steve, Thomas & Olga & give them $ for taxi & bus ride back to Panama. The last bus to Panama City is at 9, so it appears they will be staying w/ us one more night, and we'll be getting refueled and more water in the morning.
This time it was just Claire de Lune & us, the other boat we were w/ y-day was able to leave an hour before us. We got through going down w/ no problems. Our sister boat though, had a bit of an issue this time. As we were getting in to the first lock, the aft line thrown to the canal line handler didn't quite get to the line handler. Ted on Claire de Lune missed twice and for some unknown reason the canal line handler on shore didn't throw his line to Ted to help pull their stern around & Claire de Lunes anchor hit & scraped the wall of the lock twice. Thankfully no damage was done, but it was scary nonetheless. Other than that, which was enough, thank you very much, our transit went well & after going down the 3 sets of locks, we were in the Carribean! We drove the 5 miles to the flats where we anchored for the night at about 7:45 p.m.