Sunrise on Monday, January 20, taken from Mike and Kim’s hotel room:
Shelter Marina Bay is situated on the western side of the Panama Canal in what used to be an American military base called Fort Sherman. The City of Colon is on the eastern side of the canal.
Fort Sherman was constructed in 1911 to be the primary defensive base for the Caribbean sector of the Canal. It was 23,100 acres (93 km2). Only about half of the land was developed; the other half remained jungle. Ft. Sherman was one of the primary military training centers for jungle combat training, particularly during the Vietnam era. It was abandoned in December 1999 along with all the other American military bases in Panama. The Panamanian government turned it into the San Lorenzo National Park.
On Monday morning we were all up early to go for a walk in the jungle to see some of the ruins from the Ft. Sherman days, and hopefully, some jungle animals. As we were getting ready to go, our friend Teal stopped by to welcome us to the marina. It was wonderful to see him again!
Just outside the entrance to the marina, there was a fork with three roads. We took the road to the right, which we knew would lead us to what used to be the officer’s housing.
Saturday, January 18 — We forgot to mention that this week, we’d had the bottom cleaned. The bottom cleaning guy had approached us as soon as we’d pulled into the slip the previous Saturday, and was insistent about doing our bottom. He kept coming back again and again. He didn’t speak any English. When Eric finally asked him the price, Eric thought the guy had said $40, which was an amazingly good deal, so Eric said yes.
The bill he presented us with was $400. We have found out the hard way that in order for a boat to go to the Galapagos, you have to have a super bottom cleaning done, accompanied with a certification. The guy apparently thought we were going to the Galapagos and gave us the uber cleaning, and thanks to the language barrier, Eric didn’t understand what the guy’s intentions were. Eric was able to negotiate him down to $350, but that was an expensive lesson to learn. On the bright side, Kosmos’s bottom is probably the cleanest it’s ever been.
On to today… This morning, Eric spent the morning getting the fenders and lines situated for the canal transit while Christi and Keith did school.
One of the other cruisers had told us that they’d hired a gentleman with a mini-van, named Gustavo, to take them on a sightseeing tour and then to the grocery store. They said he was really good and reasonably priced, so we booked him for this morning. Gustavo picked us up from the marina at 1100, then drove downtown to pick up our crew from their hotel.
From there, he drove us to the Centennial Bridge, which was about 10 miles north. Gustavo explained that up until 1979, the Americans controlled not only the canal, but also a several mile wide strip of land on both sides of the canal. Most of the drive was through the former American territory called the Canal Zone. He pointed out former military bases that had been repurposed for other uses. One was now a small plane airport, another housed a collection of different facilities. We passed the Pedro Miguel lock, along with a couple of small towns, one on each side of the Pedro Miguel locks, that had been purpose built for the canal workers. But the majority of the land was undeveloped.
The Centennial Bridge was built in 2004 to help ease the traffic congestion on the Bridge of the Americas, which at the time was the only bridge across the canal into Panama City. Gustavo drove us across the Centennial Bridge, which had beautiful views of the canal below.
We spent the morning doing boat chores. At around 1000, Eric went up to the marina office and saw three raccoon-like creatures in the parking lot!
At about 1215, we headed out to lunch. There were three people standing under a tree in the parking lot, looking intensely up at something. Eric and Keith kept walking, but Christi stopped to see what they were looking at. It was a sloth!
Continued from yesterday… At 0400, we approached the anchorage for the large boats coming from/going to the Panama Canal. We could have done circles for two hours until dawn broke, but since the ships were not moving, were lit, and all had AIS, we were confident that we could navigate safely.
Even though there was plenty of space for us to navigate between the vessels, we still felt quite close to the monstrous ships that we passed.
A couple small pangas came really close to us during the twilight approach to the marina. At one point dinghy zoomed across our the bow so close that it made our hearts skip a beat. Here is a photo looking back at the large vessel anchorage as dawn broke.
This week has been really boring. We’ve been at sea the entire week. We left for Panama Saturday morning of January 4th. On Sunday I learned that yogurt tastes the same coming up as it does coming down. I played a lot of video games, listened to a lot of audio books, and ate a lot of food. We saw some dolphins, birds, and even a few turtles.
Cette semaine a été très ennuyante. On a navigué toute la semaine. On est parti pour le Panama le 4 janvier au matin. Dimanche j’ai appris que le yaourt a le même goût quand tu le vomis que quand tu le manges. J’ai joué à beaucoup de jeux video, écouté beaucoup de livres audio, et mangé beaucoup de nourriture. On a vu des dauphins, des oiseaux et des tortues.
On the last day, I made myself some nachos, but other than that the trip hasn’t been eventful (this was written on the 10th of January).
Le dernier jour j’ai fait des nachos, mais à part ça le voyage est très ennuyant.
