Category Archives: Passage

Time spent between destinations travelling on the water.

Panama Canal Transit – Day 2, Part 1

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Moises had told us the advisor would arrive between 0630 and 0700. Christi was up at 0500 with another round of severe tummy sickness. At 0600, everyone else got up. Interestingly, as soon as she was “on” again, her tummy sickness almost instantly went away. But, her allergies were unhappy today, too, so she was sneezy and sniffly all day.

As soon as everyone else was up, Christi made coffee, put out food for breakfast, and did dishes. Everyone helped with folding sheets and tidying up so Kosmos looked like a boat again instead of a dorm room. Outside, all was tranquil and placid in the early morning light. There were 11 big ships in the anchorage with us. The first shot is of our giant mooring and the second is of the surroundings.

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The advisor arrived close to 0800. Today’s advisor is named Davidson, and he is just as pleasant of a person as Moises.

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He got right to business with Continue reading →

The Panama Canal Transit – Day 1, Part 2

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Continued from yesterday”¦ Pacific finally got to the edge of the first lock at Gatun. It almost looks like a runway, with fingers of land on both sides of the waterway. The “runway” extends for quite a way before actually taking you into the chamber. We were going through the left set of locks. We waited a fair distance behind and watched while a little row boat with two guys in it rowed out from the finger. They were carrying the steel cables. They seemed to be helping to attach the cables to the front and back corners of the starboard side. Once the cables were attached, they repeated the process on the port side.

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Once all the cables were in place, the tug turned around, the rowboats rowed away, and the locomotives slowly started to move forward, going up the little hill to the higher lock wall, while Pacific moved forward at the identical speed. Pacific stopped in front of the lock gate. The bridge for car traffic is above this lock, so there were lots of cars zooming back and forth above Pacific while they were getting it situated. For some reason, it seemed almost surreal to see the cars over the canal. It was just as surreal as seeing the cruise ship sitting in the middle of the jungle.

At 1745, we moved forward to the edge of the finger, where Pacific had stopped to be prepared. Here is what the lock ahead looks like. Two guys stood on each side of us, each holding a line. The starboard forward threw first. Joel caught the hook and attached the line.

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Then aft starboard threw, and Tom caught and attached. The process was Continue reading →

The Panama Canal Transit – Day 1, Part 1

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Christi was up at 0500, feeling absolutely miserable with her stomach worse than ever. She was making even more frequent trips to the restroom and now had stomach pain. In the early hour before dawn, the Howler Monkeys were moaning and groaning like crazy. It is really an eerie sound to begin with, and even eerier to hear when you aren’t in the jungle. It made the new day feel almost ominous. They sounded so close. Were the monkeys in the marina or was the sound carrying from the jungle? When the sun came up, she saw the sky was overcast with big, dark, threatening clouds. There were intermittent short bursts of rain and it was really windy.

At 0800, everyone else was up and we got to work on getting the boat ready to go. Eric installed the new blower that Jeff had brought. It should have been a quick project, but unfortunately, the repair guy in Antigua had Continue reading →

Welcome to Colon, Cristobal, Panama

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Neither of us slept well. We were up with the first rays of light on the horizon and pulled up anchor shortly after the sun rose. Today’s ride was much better than yesterday’s. We were in a little more protected of an area and it made a huge difference. This morning, as Eric was walking into the kitchen, a wave came and threw him off balance. Somehow he managed to crunch his little toe against the wall. He heard his toe crack, and thinks it is broken. Sigh.

Eric also noticed the gauges didn’t seem to be working properly again. He went into the engine room and saw the connector was loose. He cleaned it and made sure it was firmly reconnected and all was good with the gauges again.

Well before Colon was visible, we could see some AIS targets on the edge of the radar screen that we knew were probably anchored around Colon. We could barely see the outlines of the ships up ahead. As we got closer, more and more targets appeared until the entire the screen was full of them. The ships went from distant outlines to intimidating masses anchored quite a way outside the bay. Eric has said at least 10 dozen times that he loves AIS. Thanks to AIS, we can tell which ships are anchored and which are moving, and if they are moving, what direction and speed they are moving at so we can stay out of their way. Fortunately, most of the ships here are anchored, and getting in looks to be fairly easy and straightforward. But not knowing if the ships were coming at us or not would have stressed us out to no end.

As the ships came into clear focus, we could vaguely see the outline of a huge industrial complex and a few skyscrapers on the shore. At 1100, Eric called port control on the radio and Continue reading →

Passage from San Blas to Linton Island, Panama

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We really would have liked to stay in the San Blas at least two more days to take part in the special events. Today on Carti Suitupo there are festivities for the biggest holiday of the year for the Kuna people, when they won their autonomy from Panama. Mr. G had invited us back for the last day of the puberty party, which is tomorrow, where the girl is unveiled in her newfound glory, with the shaved head, ring in her nose and her body painted. But we were out of time and really needed to get to the canal. We knew from the radio net that between the anticipated festivities and the not so great weather we have been having, not a lot of boats have headed to Colon lately, which means the canal wait is probably short. It sounds like a lot of boats would all be heading out in the next two or three days, when the forecast improves and the holiday is over. We were afraid that if we arrived in the middle of the glut, we’d get caught in a long canal line.

The trip to Colon would take about 13 hours total, an awkward number. Yesterday we had gone back and forth about the best strategy. Strategy one was to Continue reading →