Sunday, January 19 — We’d meant to set the alarm for 0300, but Christi screwed up and set it for 0200. She was able to reset it, roll over and go back to sleep, but Eric was up for the day. Which worked out okay, because our crew was also up at 0200 and texting Eric about their status.

The crew arrived at 0250. Eric let the crew in the marina gate. Christi got up at 0300 and immediately started making coffee. We did all the last things needed to get ready to take Kosmos to sea, and untied at 0400. Eric decided to run the generator and AC all day so that the fresh lake water would flush out any salt buildup in the units, as well as keeping it cooler inside. 

Eric drove us to the rendezvous site between buoys 4 and 6, where we did a loop until we saw the pilot boat approaching us. The pilot boat pulled up along side us and a man jumped aboard. Then, much to our surprise, a second man jumped aboard, as well. 

The first man introduced himself as Thaddeus, a trainee advisor, and other man as Amado, his trainer. Thaddeus (the trainee) was very serious; Amado (the trainer) was more relaxed.

We drove towards the first of the two Mira Flores locks. The last time we went through the canal, we’d had five line handlers – three highly experienced boaters and what we’d thought were two professional line handlers (we later found out that only one of them was an experienced canal line handler). Christi was the videographer. This time, Christi was line handling, and none of our crew were experienced. But based on our experience the last time, we felt the crew was trained well enough and that all would be fine. 

While the canal was normally calm, every time a large ships or pilot boat passed us, it created sizable wakes — and we really had to hold on!