Onward! to the Marquesas Islands....

The Marquesas Islands. You know contrary to experience, we read up on places we'd like to visit. We talk to people who've been there, to get their take on the place and then we go...and we inevitably find it to be radically different to our expectations. Its quite amazing the difference. So we've read up on these islands..a lot..we've been told that the snorkeling and diving is exceptional...loads of fish varieties...but not many corals....the water is wonderfully clear with great visibility....the islanders are friendly and will barter food for things....its been hard to find out what things..but we've stocked up with stuff for the children and some vanity stuff for young ladies. It will be interesting to see all of this for ourselves. That's all part of the fun of traveling.

Sunset Day 1

I could give you a day by day blow of what we did but I wonder if that might get boring. So I'll tell the interesting bits ...Day 1 ..we managed to do a lot of sailing, but were heading into the wind and so progress is slow..even on a cat...the wind kept moving around..and I mean moving around. It blew from the south then a few minutes later it moved west then north then east then south and then west then north....and from 0 knots to 20 knots. All in one night...David put in one reef at sundown, then he shook it out a few hours later...a comment in the log book “Our route plot looks like a 2 year old's attempt to join the dots “...I struggled to keep the boat on a reasonable course during my watch...forever tacking this way and that, Eventually David took over at 2am and he had the same fun..putting in reefs and then having to shake them out again...we were both exhausted and we were going nowhere fast..or even slowly.!Oh yes we also had rain, and lightening, and more rain and then some more rain....So eventually David hove-to...ahh peace and quiet. We might as well try and get some rest until the wind makes it's mind up as to what it's going to do :-) Our goal was to sail SW so any direction in the S to W quadrant was acceptable, but sometimes we were headed WNW and others ESE as our angle between tacks was about 120 deg with the current factored in (it was against us).

With all this going on, David saw that one of the sail's battens was working its way out..so he re- positioned it and tightened it up...then he had to repair the topping lift rope..it had chafed through and he had to tie another rope to it, to get it working again. So the dawn hours found us sailing under genoa only whilst repairs were done.

As you can see a very frustrating time...:-p

Our 24hour distance covered...a mere 61 nautical miles.. ;-( A SURPRISE...David called 'Good News' on the VHF and they responded.. whoo hoo, we swapped positions and found that we were about 13 miles away from them...we chatted about the conditions and they were pleased to hear that we'd also decided to hove-to. Then we lost radio contact and that was that... sigh... we sailed on slowly. By the time it was my watch again we were racing along at 2.7 knots :-P the ocean was almost a mirror, hardly a breath of wind. We'd decided to take a break and have a sundowner ...it cost us a mile..we drifted backwards.....and by the end of my watch..6 hours later I was so frustrated with trying to keep the boat moving... I wanted to scream..I was more than happy to hand over to David at 2 am...It was starting to drizzle...boy was I ever happy to be climbing into my bunk.

Rain Clouds, everywhere we looked.

David got a bit of wind so at least the boat was moving..about 4 knots....and in the right direction too...and so during the day we pottered on...slowly...we only run the engine when we need to charge the batteries..for about 2 hours a day if there has been no sun, for the solar panels.

The GPS was having some fun too..note the lines off to the side..we did not actually do that.

And so it comes around to me again...my watch on the Monday night...30^th May....no wind again. I sat at the helm willing the boat forward...and accomplished an astounding 2 nautical miles in 6 hours...yeah I thought I'd been frustrated yesterday...Boy! Tonight really took the cake! I was in a really bad mood when I went to bed...of course by the time I woke up the wind had risen to a roaring 4 knots....and we were once again racing along... comment in the log book... We have done an amazing 3 ¾ miles ( as the crow flies) in the last 12 hours and probably twice that over ground in tack changes and wind shifts.”

When was this going to end....please please give us a decent breeze. We'd even whistled for the wind during sundowners..to no avail.

By mid morning we were finally moving at 5.7 knots...a much more respectable speed. Then at 15:04 ...we heard “ crack! Shuck shuck shuck.clack clack” what the heck....???? we both realised at the same time..the main halyard has broken the main sail is down! Heck …..we just get moving and now this! David took our topping lift....the rope that holds up the end of the boom and tied it to the Main...."Okay" he said "we'll do without a topping lift...sail like this and when the wind dies again I'll go up the mast and sort it out"......did the wind die again..heck no!!

Okay so that was on Day 4. The wind stayed at between 5 and 15 knots with very choppy seas...like in a top loader washing machine., so it's been impossible for David to go up to the top of the mast as yet. We've had loads of rain and had to constantly drape ourselves over the transom to bail Limo, our tender, as her bailer holes seemed to be blocked with something...we found out later that it was blocked with onion skins. Also there seemed to be a lot of water getting into the Puddytat via an outside locker. In really rough seas we are used to going down and pumping the shower well out every now and then, but this was ridiculous..every third wave that broke over us I knew I'd have to go down and pump...Why?

The first time I realised that there was a problem the shower was totally awash with water slopping into the cabin area..what a mess. I had to bail into the basin whilst David cleaned out the filter for the pump. There was broken bits of shell and hair clogging it. Still, why was Puddytat taking on so much water? David watched the movement of the boat and it seemed as if the port bow was struggling to lift out of the waves, what was making it so heavy? He went forward to investigate. In the very pointy section of the bow is a locker that we keep our fenders in. The lid locks down, its not water proof so water gets in, but there is a drain for the water to escape through. The ropes from the fenders had somehow worked their way down and out through the drain, blocking it rather effectively. So the locker filled with water, the fenders were pushing against the locker lid and nearly escaped entirely when David opened it up. Now when we put the fenders into that locker..we tie all the ropes together. This seems to have done the job of stopping them from blocking the drain. The bow, filled with water, was having a hard time lifting up after it had plunged down into waves. Once David cleared the drain hole everything returned to normal. Since then we've had hardly any water into the shower well.

You may be asking, why does water get into the boat via an outside locker...well for some strange reason, when the fuel tanks were installed into those lockers, some clever soul drilled a nice big hole from there into the inner works of Puddytat, at the lowest level of the locker, to put hoses through. So now water sometimes finds its way through that hole and into the shower. Thank heavens its into the shower and not into any other part of the yacht...Just another job on David's list of things to change to our liking.

Anyway so Day 5 slipped by, we're pretty exhausted. This section of the trip is sure taxing my sailing prowess, goodness knows what a woman who's sailing with her husband 'because he wants to', feels. I'm totally bushed, she'd be ' hey there , beam me up Scotty, I've had enough'...I actually said to David ..'Okay, stop the boat I wanna get off'...kinda jokingly just to let him know that I was feeling rather stretched... In times like this you can decide to hove-to. Its wonderfully calming and restful. You can get a good few hours of relaxed sleep that will fortify you and off you go again. We didn't, we're seasoned sailors don't cha know..ha ha Oh yes I forgot to tell you, Remember we'd spent that time in the Las Perlas islands cleaning the bottom of the boat? Well later that day I discovered yet another tiny crab hiding out in one of my ears! I kid you not! This is the 4^th time its happened, damned annoying. Anyway I don't know why but this time I got earache...so here we are sailing along with all this stuff happening and I've got earache..which then infects one of my teeth, so I get tooth ache...sheesh! I treated the earache with a mixture of half water half vinegar squirted into my ear 2 or three times a day, plus two Iboprufen just before bed so that I could get some sleep.

It worked....eventually.

During the night the wind decided to strengthen to 28 knots so we put a second reef in the main. Puddytat sailed better and we didn't really slow down that much. Also saw 4 ships during my watch.

Day 6 was entirely uneventful. It slid by, strong winds and lots of rain, but peaceful..thanks.

The same could not be said of Day 7...I woke up and on going above to greet David and the day, I was informed that we would have to hove-to to fix the Port trampoline. Ho hum. It had been bashed by the water so much that the stitching that was probably rather UV damaged just gave out, so it was half dangling in the water. Also Flea, our other dinghy, was tied down to it, so we had to come up with a plan. Another thing was the roller furler rope for the genoa sail, it had chafed through and needed to be replaced... so two jobs to be done and I hadn't had breakkies yet...pooh

The front pole on the trampoline broke..and then everything just fell apart..

When we hove-to and went forward we realised that the roller furler job would be easy but that we couldn't repair the trampoline, we'd have to remove it, but that would leave a huge open space there. So we came up with a great idea. We wove ropes back and forth as best we could. You couldn't walk on it but if you slipped and fell you wouldn't fall through it. Good Ja! ...Ja! :-) Those two jobs took four hours and during that we'd drifted 4 miles backwards. But the job was done!

Our new trampoline.. :-D

We cut the line and tied it off...

I forgot there was one other job to be done before we set sail......We'd run over yet another long line and it had caught on something under the boat... David had cut it but it was still under us. He tied it to one of the stanchion poles, and now he had to go swimming to cut it away from under the boat...he thought maybe it was tangled around the props....

While he was doing that I had some much needed toast and pate to eat. Toast, you ask, do you have a toaster on board?...we do, but not like you'd recognise. :-) In the UK you can buy these great little fold up flat toasters that you can set on a camp fire, we wanted one but in the States you can only buy those stand up Coleman toasters for the fire...we don't like them. So we had to improvise...we looked everywhere for something that was made of mesh and that would lie flat on our gas (propane) stove. We were walking through Office Mart and I saw an envelope holder..the type you put on your side table at home to hold the post. I stopped, picked one up turned it on it's back and looked at David. He smiled and bought two. It's perfect for toasting the bread that David bakes...well for any bread really. ;-)

Our Toaster ! :-D

Suddenly I heard a yell..Oh heck I thought, there is a 2 knot current running, he had strung a rope to the boat with a fender at the end of it so that he could grab onto it if the current pulled him away from the boat, had he missed it, did I have to go and rescue him? Fortunately that wasn't the problem, or maybe unfortunately, because David had been stung rather badly by a blue bottle, he had welts all over him...out came the vinegar again..Its great at neutralizing the sting. He did, however, clear the props of line before he got out, so we were soon on our way again.

The sting marks stayed with David for about a day.

Day 8. David's suffering from sunburn from yesterday and he lost a filling that he'd had done up in Mexico. In the late afternoon David spotted a sail, behind us, and over time watched it get closer. We were doing 7.5 knots with one reef in the main and this other yacht was slowly catching us up. He called them and they answered. The boat is called Rapparee, Don and Sally are delivering her to New Zealand. She's a 60 foot yacht, and she has her main and jib out fully and is doing 8 knots. That's why she's catching us.. ha ha We watch them sail by, it takes them about 3 hours to finally overtake us. They're heading for the Galapagos Islands for a day or two to do some repairs..we tell them that we're not going but they give us some info about the best place to drop anchor if we decide we need to go there.

Rapparee

Day 9. We've used rather a lot of fuel and David's filling up the log book with calculations of estimates to see if we can last till the Marquesas or if we should stop at the Galapagos islands for a top up. We discuss it and decide that if we need to conserve fuel, we'll cook all the food in the freezer and store it into the fridge then switch the freezer off. We're only using 3 gallons of water a day at the moment, but maybe we could economise some more...so saving using the water maker..also we can run the engines at lower revs when we charge the batteries...Okay so no worries we'll just carry on.

During the afternoon the boat kept on veering off at a tangent...why? We sail with the autopilot on 'wind'. Are there big wind changes going on? David looks up at the top of the mast. Our wind direction instrument has been knocked sideways, maybe by a bird. He switches the auto pilot to compass heading...Add it to the list. Every evening at six thirty we put a symbol of a Martini glass on our track, then we look back to see how far we've traveled since the last one. Its kinda fun. I also take a photo of the sunset, if its not clouded over and raining. Today we've sailed 181 miles since cocktail hour yesterday. :-)

As usual I take over and start my night watch at 8 pm..20h00. We're traveling at 9.3 knots ..this is great. Don't know what the wind speed is but it feels much the same as it has been for the last day or so.

Then at 20h50, …..DISASTER!!! The topping lift that we had moved to become a main halyard snapped. The main came sliding down the mast. I yelled for David and went to center the boom so that it wouldn't smash the solar panels. Fortunately it missed them. But now we had no way to get the main back up. We're sailing with the genoa only. What the heck is chafing the ropes through all of a sudden. We've done heaps of sailing all the way from Hawaii to Canada and down the west coast of the USA, Mexico for 2 years, down the Americas...with no problems..AND we've replaced these lines {ropes} with new, so it's not as if they are old and worn out.

We're a day away from the Galapagos Islands...it seems that we are fated to stop there. David is not happy about this. We envisage huge costs, for the privilege of anchoring there to do our repairs. Fortunately we'd got that info from Don and Sally the other day, it was going to come in handy.

The x's are where we've been and the cocktail glasses are our course we've traveled on this leg, the 'x' in front of us is our way point to sail to.

Day 10. We have an uneventful sail, didn't have to tack again, the wind was kind and we sailed right to Wreck Bay on St Crystobal Island in the Galapagos, dropping anchor at 8pm... 20h00....

The sun going down as we head into port....

Wonder what tomorrow will bring...and how the heck is David going to get up that mast with no ropes to pull him up?

See ya. :-)

Panama to the Darien Forest....

We left Panama on beautiful sunny Monday 23^rd June 2011 and sailed towards the Las Perlas Islands. The wind was not very strong and so after a few hours of sailing we had to switch the engine on to get us to an anchorage by sundown. Using the engine was something we wanted to avoid because after our visit to the rain forest we'd be leaving for our long Puddle jump of nearly 4000 nautical miles, with only the Galapagos as an option for refueling. We'd decided to give the Galapagos a miss because it would be far too expensive to stop there. We'd heard rumours that it would cost $150 for an agent, plus $100 per person, plus $50 for the boat per day...all that just to be able to refuel was just too much. Of course these costs would then allow us to stay in that anchorage for 21 days..if we wanted to see anything of the other islands we'd have to pay for a tour...we thought NOT.

Onions...we are loaded up and ready....off we go!

So anyway I digress, en route David managed to break the Titan winch handle....:-), man doesn't know his own strength....finally though, we eventually dropped our anchor in a lovely spot on an Island called Moga Moga. David lit up our charcoal braai and cooked us some chicken breasts, pork chops and whole onions. I'd been marinading these in different marinades. The idea was that we'd eat some of it now and some tomorrow and some the next day. We would be sailing again early tomorrow to get down to Espirito Santo Island where we were going to spend some time cleaning the barnacles off the bottom of the boat. David wanted to make sure that the intakes for the engines were clear of critters. So we knew we wouldn't have a lot of time for cooking.

Anchorage in the Las Perlas Islands

The evening is perfect, with calm mirror smooth water, sounds of bird life, the sun going down and wafting aromas of delicious food.... ahhhhhh yeah!

We awoke bright and early on Tuesday, lifted the anchor and set off in a good breeze. Unfortunately the morning breeze didn't stick around and so we ended up motoring the last 12 miles, dropping our anchor at 2pm. We then spent about 2 hours in the water scraping and cleaning the hulls. Fortunately the water temperature was a lot warmer than the last time we were here, but the visibility was still bad. After our shower to get rid of pesky shrimps that cling to your clothing and hair, we sat down to dinner and then enjoyed a Maitai cocktail and watched the sun go down, chatting about the trip tomorrow..the Darien Rainforest....So exciting :-)

Wednesday morning dawned bright and sunny and with high expectations and happy hearts we lifted the anchor and sailed east. We decided that the river of choice would be the Sucio. We didn't want to see people. We just wanted to go up a river, drop the anchor and soak up the ambiance.

We sailed all day and arrived at the entrance of the delta....It was massive...miles and miles across and deep. We'd have to anchor behind a little island for the night and continue the next day. Out came the sundowners and I created a stir fry chicken dish out of the pieces that David had cooked on the Braai.

After a leisurely breakfast we set sail for our river of choice....soon the wind died and on went the engine, we motored up a wide calm river with trees that grew tall right from the waters edge. They were the tallest Mangrove trees I'd ever seen. Around every corner I expected to see forest...you know tall trees, vines, monkeys, parrots...all the stuff we'd been hearing about from others and reading about in books.....all we got was mangroves, mangroves and more mangroves....we eventually went down a tributary and dropped our anchor. Switching off the engines, we sat and listened to the silence. It was unreal. There wasn't a man made sound to be heard. Fantastic.

Mirror smooth and tranquil.

A panoramic view of our spot.

A close-up of the section to our port side.

As we waited the birds started calling again. We didn't see many birds, but we heard them. We heard the Howler Monkeys and some other type of monkey. We had a moth visit us. It's wings looked just like a dried brown leaf, quite amazing.

The moth..quite lovely :-)

We realised that to actually see the 'rain forest' we'd have to go further up the river, go ashore somewhere and go walking. We didn't have the time..we needed to be crossing the puddle. If we ever come back to Panama, we decided, we'd take a tour up into the mountains above the lake between the two ends of the Canal and we'd take a land tour from the city to the Darien Forest. We certainly weren't experiencing the forest right now. However, this spot that we'd chosen to stop in was wonderful. Peaceful....till the dawn chorus..ha ha what a racket it was just brilliant to hear the area wake up. During the night the cicadas had been giving it stick and David actually woke up out of a dead sleep and was half out of bed before he realised that it was cicadas he was hearing and not the fridge motor trying to run without the cooling water running..ha ha...It rained while we were here...no, really, you say, you are in a rain forest you know...*grin* the heavens just opened up and the rain poured down...the Howler Monkeys groused and complained we smiled and enjoyed the idea of a salt free boat for a change. David said that if it wasn't for the bugs and horse flies ( one bit him) he'd stay a week.... :-)

Wonderful wonderful rain :-D

We could only lift the anchor at about 11am because till then the tide had been coming in at a rate of at least 4 knots. We didn't want to fight it..rather enjoy the morning and then motor out on the ebb tide...whoosh :-) This we did, finally leaving the river and entering the huge bay area. We set sail for the Marquises. Whoo hoo!!!!

Little did we know ...this wasn't going to be a milk run.

A quick note

Just to let you know that I'm not having so much fun here in the Marquises that I've forgoton to write about the trip...I've written everything up but as the internet costs about USD$5 an hour and is VERY slow, I cannot and will not waste good hard earned cash loading up the story and photo's. So I'm sorry folks but you're going to have to wait till we get somewhere cheaper...then 'l be loading a new story ever couple of days to catch up. :-D

Till then......

Staying In Panama

We've anchored in an area called Las Brisas. The water is too dirty to swim in, yet sometimes we have to go in to scrape barnacles and slime off the bottom of the boat..not much fun but it has to be done. David runs the starboard engine so that there will be hot water for a good hot shower when we finally drag ourselves back on board. Always when I look back at the weeks we've spent anywhere, I ask myself.."what have we been doing?", and realise that I should have kept a daily log...I know that for the first week and a half we were clearing into Panama and then zooming off to the Las Perlas Islands for a week with Claire and Denver....then we started to do odd jobs on the boat..and the days and weeks seem to have merged into each other till we notice that we've been here for almost two months!

Buses are individually owned here in Panama. Some of the owners paint their buses up beautifully and some of them light them up like Christmas trees at night...soooo pretty

Down town

Looking for a post office. Pretty area this.

A new spiral building going up.

The city center has some interesting spots....but it's, of course, not all like this ;-D

In an area called Cinco De Mayo there are a lot of vendors selling all sorts of things, fresh fruit and veg, hamburgers for a dollar, a spiral cut sausage stuck on a stick, wrapped in bacon and cooked, but the most interesting one I saw was an instant sugarcane juice machine. They'd shove sticks of cane in and the dried crushed sticks would come out one end and lovely sweet juice out the other....so ingenious!

David had noticed that one of our jammers were tearing the outer covering of our main halyard and the last thing we needed was to have that break, then jam up the works and inhibit the mainsail from being dropped....just what you don't need if the wind comes up..so he first spent about 4 days traveling around Panama trying to find outlets for things we needed on board....an almost futile pastime. Panama doesn't really cater to us yachties. We are only here for about three months of the year then we're off again, either into the Caribbean or off across the Puddle to the South Pacific islands...so why bother get a business running for that short a period of time. Consequently if we want any specified parts we have to fly them in from the USA. So While he was ordering a new jammer or clutch he also ordered new lockable latches for all 10 of the outside lockers where we store our fenders, extra ropes, extra water and diesel, our spinnaker, and hose pipes, cleaning fluids....all sorts of  things that we need periodically on the boat. We also needed spare impellers as the ones we'd bought before were the wrong size... and other little things that we wanted to put on Puddytat so that our trip over would be a good one. :-D

I've started a new blog page. It's to do with all of us Africans,  who create things that are influenced by our time whilst in Africa. There will be several authors posting on this blog. I'm sure it will soon prove to be rather interesting. The blog is called Africa Bursting Out!

The part of the saloon seating that's finished.

I've been finishing some painting, getting my stock for my online business up to date, then I revamped the photo's and hopefully made my shop more user friendly. The internet connection we have here on the boat can be very slow..so this has taken me longer than I first thought. I've also been sewing for the boat...a new cover for the cushion that runs along the back of the cockpit, a repair and adding on of some shade cloth to the surfboard cover, I also painted the bimini with waterproofing so now the rain doesn't come pouring through any more. :-D.... I've nearly completed the saloon seating..finally getting that job done! Never again will I undertake upholstering...It's not something that I enjoy at all....I'll be really very pleased when I've finally finished it...I've made a waterproof cover for our huge igloo that doubles as a cockpit table, so that rain and sea water will no longer get into it, keeping the food we have stored in there nice and dry.



David has also been fiddling with the starboard rudder, putting in a new platform for the hydraulic arm to sit on . It looks very smart now. He's also had to work, and is still working, on our water maker which packed up just before Claire and Denver got here...

New base for the hydraulic steering.

Old locker locks..the circle couldn't reach the hooks!

Nice neat new lockable locks.

On occasion we treat ourselves like on Saturday just past, we went to the movies for the afternoon very pleasant. On Thursday night we'll go to the local pizza restaurant, meet up with some buddies and drink beer, eat pizza, talk rubbish and come home..great fun ;-)

We have had a lot of rain and when it rains we can't do any work outside the boat. In this area, when it's started to rain we sometimes get winds of up to 35 knots racing through the anchorage. Sure enough boats start to drag. A few of them would surely have ended up on the rocks but for other sailors leaving their boats in driving rain, jumping in the dinghy and racing over to the stricken yachts, climbing aboard, lifting the anchor and moving the yacht, either under its own engine ( if it's not locked up and can be got at) or towing it with dinghies, or getting another motor yacht, ( which happened about two days ago), to tow it away from sure disaster, and dropping the anchor again making sure that it holds before we all go back to our boats to dry off and rest. WHEW!

A rain storm building over Panama City.

Different day, different storm..notice the mirror smooth water.

                         The mirror smooth water doesn't last long. It's a genuine calm before the storm.
David was given a bottle of Rum today, as a thank you for rescuing another cruiser's boat...yum :-)  We don't expect to be given gifts for doing things to help our neighbours. We are like a small village and we get to know each other...even if we don't know the owners of the boat we'd still race over and try and save it...The thought of coming home after a day searching town for some spare part or other to find your boat wrecked on rocks is too much to bear...we wouldn't want that to happen to us so why would we sit back and let it happen to others. Our motto : "do unto others as you'd want to be done unto you".

Last Thursday or Friday we went to town, to a store called Mega Depot where we bought about 6 months supplies of cleaning stuffs, canned goods, nuts, dried fruits..flour for bread making, etc, etc. We ended up with two huge trollies packed full...(shopping carts to some) and we still need to stock up with our fresh fruit and bulk rice, sugar and salt...strangely it seems that one of the things that islanders run out of, is salt! David and I can't understand this....when we've run short of salt we fill a bowl with sea water and leave it on deck to dry out...hey presto..salt....Out there deep in the ocean the water is lovely and clean, we use it in our cooking when we make pasta, potatoes or rice. We're also going to buy kids 't' shirts, shorts, skirts, toys, some educational stuff, toothpaste and tooth brushes, nail polish and remover, perfumes, body lotions and anything else feminine I can think of ..oh yes needles and thread.....these are great to use for trade for fresh fruit and stuff out there on far away islands.

And so the time flies by, We seem to be always be busy, then the rains come, work stops and we are outside watching to see if anyone is dragging, needing help, or making sure we're not dragging. At the same time I'm collecting rain water to do laundry in....and once I sprayed soap all over the cockpit floor and got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed it..letting the rain water rinse it down...the air here in Panama is very dirty, what with the hundreds of ships passing by, the car exhausts and soot from burning sugar cane fields...things turn black in no time at all.

Late afternoon is always the best time of day. The air has been cooled by the rain and there is a slight breeze blowing .. we put our feet up and read or surf the internet. Sometimes someone stops by for a chat and a cold beer. This is okay...but I must admit I'm pretty sick of this place, I really do not like cities..I yearn for the fresh clean air of the open ocean...and I'm really looking forward to our adventure to the Darien Rainforest.

YUP we're going to sail there and venture up the river. We intend dropping our anchor, way up river and experiencing the toucans, parrots of all kinds, myriads of butterflies, howler and other monkeys...watching the snakes and crocodiles swim by...but no humans... There are humans around but there aren't many and it's apparently easy to find a place devoid of them. So that's what the next post will be about...

There will be a long period of time between this post and the next. After we leave the forest  we will be heading out to the French Polynesian Islands...that will take about 4 weeks...We don't have an SSB radio and so don't have 'sailmail' therefore we will have no contact with the outside world till we arrive in Hiva Oa or somewhere like that.......so no posts sorry....I will be writing while we are sailing so that when we get ashore I'll post them up for you to read.

Until then..... :-D

Conquering The Panama Canal.

 Boldly, Bravely and without Fear, we set off to conquer the Panama Canal...

Yeah Right :-p To say I wasn't nervous would be a total lie. I was in charge of 125 feet of rope. I was told that a man on the side of the canal would throw me a rope with a monkeys fist, (a large knot to give it weight), on it and I'd have to catch it and tie it to my rope. Then I had to let the rope out as the man pulled his line in. When he put the large loop around the bollard, I had to quickly and smoothly pull in the slack and tie the rope off. Whew you think..Okay. I can do that...then come more instructions...as the water lowers or rises depending on which lock you're in you have to keep the boat centered by taking in slack or letting the line out, carefully....Okay, you think again, I can do that....
Thing is, you don't want to mess up and cause damage to the boat. When the water comes in and you are being lifted up, it boils like you're in a huge cauldron and the water swirls around, pushing the little boat this way and that...But I digress, lets start at the beginning....

Sunrise..David and Ian chatting in the cockpit.

We were told to be ready for our Advisor who was to arrive at 7.30am...at a 5.45am a chap called Calliemira arrived with our ropes, 4 of them, two for the bow and two for the stern...man they were long. We got up and started our day...Ness and Ian are the owners of Eilean Donan the 36ft sloop we had agreed to help get through the canal. Ness had some tasty little croissants with slices of steak inserted into them..she warmed them up and served them with hot coffee for everyone and Lemon tea for me....very YUM! we sat and waited and chatted, ate some pineapple chunks and more pastries and waited ...7.30am came and went....

Pastries and fruit for breakfast.

Ian got onto the VHF and called the Canal people asking them what was up. We were then informed that the advisor would be there at 08.30am..At about 08.25 we saw the pilot boat and went out to meet them...the Advisor had to leap from that boat to Eilean Donan...We gave him coffee and food. He said we had to be at the lock by 10.30am...so Ian worked out how long it would take us to get there and shortly we were finally underway...Oh yes, while we were waiting, Charlie stopped by..he'd rented Ian the 125ft lines...he gulped down a welcome hot cup of coffee. :-)

Charlie..A nice guy, full of smiles..speaks great English.

Ahmed, Our Advisor lands neatly on the deck after leaping off the pilot boat.

We motored under the huge Bridge of The Americas, past a large dock where ships that are too large for the canal have to unload all their goods so that they can be loaded onto other smaller ships for the crossing.

Huge bridge..the locals complain of traffic jams due to the smaller roads leading to it.

Going under.. :-)

The bridge and traffic...

We arrived at the lock, Our Advisor, Ahmed, radioed ahead, the tourist boat that we were going to tie up next to, was way to big and would have damaged Eilean Donan, so we wanted to go alone...the tourist boat said we could go ahead of them into the lock.. Off we scooted. The sides of the lock were way way way up up there...the roes came whistling down, thudding onto the coach roof. I grabbed mine and tied it on. The man onshore gestured for me to let it go and he started hauling it up. In no time at all we were tied up. I had a bit of difficulty using the cleat and finally decided to wrap my line around a winch. Ahmed, leapt to my rescue and held the line whilst I wrapped it...man there was a lot of tension on that line. Using the winch made the pulling and releasing of the line smoother and didn't pull on my back nearly as much.

The docks where the really big ships are offloaded.

What the lock looks like from land...

In the lock..waiting for the water to start rising.

The water starts to boil in from under us..

The water poured in, I used a winch handle and wound the line in...success! in no time at all the water had filled up the lock and the bells were ringing to warn everyone the the gates would soon be opening.

Up we went

Right to the top...the gates start to open...

Ahmed yelled at us to slacken our lines and take them in. What would happen next is the boat would motor slowly into the next lock, the men would walk along the side holding onto their small rope that was still attached to our big ones. Like a looonnnggg leash :-) when the yacht was in the position that Ahmed decided was good, we'd let the men onshore pull the big ropes up again and tie them around the bollards...and the routine would begin again. This time the boat went too far forward and I was fast running out of rope..I told Ahmed and he asked Ian to back the boat up...whew, just in time too, I only had about 5 feet of line left. After this lock we had to motor for a while till we got to the last lock on this side where we repeated the whole senario. Again the boat went too far forward and the man on shore was tugging at the line..I waggled the end of my rope at him and he stopped, giving Ian time to reverse the boat up a bit. To top it all it started to pour with rain. Wonderful! it wasn't cold at all, it was a welcome relief from the heat of the sun. There we were, standing absolutely soaked with huge grins on our faces, the people on the tourist boat behind us taking photo's of these mad people in their little yacht transversing the canal..ha ha

After the locks comes a huge lake we had to cross..pouring with rain..lovely..

A pretty yellow butterfly decided to have a drink of rain water..ha ha.

The next bit was a long haul of several hours of motoring across a massive lake to get us to a huge buoy near the next set of locks. This area of Panama is truly beautiful, the trees crowd the waters edge. Even with the sky heavily overcast and occasionally pouring more water on us, the place was gorgeous. We passed a huge section that was being carved out by massive machinery, which looked like toys in comparison to the area being carved. On enquiring about it from Ahmed, we were told that another series of locks were being built to take ships of up to 1000ft long. The locks would be 50ft deep and 60ft wide..I think...While we were motoring along David told us that the activity on shore looked like they were going to blast. He explained that by the lay of the land he could see that they'd hit rock and that was where they'd be blasting...We all went..ahha and hmmmm making appropriate sounds whilst not really taking him seriously  ha ha thejoke was on us because a moment later our world was rocked by an immense explosion. I managed to get a photo of the end of the blast...

The end of the blast..the smoke was settling..

The section of land being cleared for the new locks...

Several hours later we arrived at a massive bouy. It was so large we could tie up to it like it was a dock.

Ian tying up a center line with Ness and Cassimira, our expert line handler looking on...

The sun was setting and a pilot boat arrived to collect Ahemd.

Calm, collected and in charge. Ahmed was a good advisor.

Off he goes..bye.

Ness cooked up a wonderful curried chicken dinner. We were starving by this time and the beers were going to our heads..haha..thanks Ness, it was very yummy. I was told that there are some people who don't bother to feed the crew on a crossing...I could hardly believe my ears. The work you do is tiring and you get very hungry and thirsty. To not take care of your crew is is is....words fail me. I mean really! even if some of the crew are being paid for the days work, they should still be fed. Cassiemira was a paid linesman, he was also in charge of taking the lines back to the Pacific side of the canal at the end of the trip, saving the boat owners the hassle of sorting that problem out. He worked at the bow with Ness and she said that Cassie worked really hard, jumping to do things even before it was obvious that they needed to be done...how can you not feed someone like that?

The lake is surrounded by a dense forest of trees.

Sundowners and supper..ahh :-)

We didn't have to be ready for our new advisor till two pm the next day, so it turned out to be lovely and lazy. I got up really early and took a photo of the sunrise

Sunrise..so pretty.

..and then crawled back into bed to read....I finally got up a little later than everyone else.....we had breakfast..yummy scrambled eggs with fresh fruit afterwards...The night before two more yachts had appeared and tied up to the other buoy that was near us.

Two other yachts had tied up to the other buoy.

They were going the other way. At about 9am their advisors arrived and off they went. They seemed a little concerned that we were still attached to our bouy, but we yelled that we were going east...they gave the thumbs up and tootled off across that huge lake. Several of the ships that had anchored there overnight were starting up their engines and making ready to get moving. we just sat about and relaxed. At about 1pm I suggested to David that we climb onto the buoy with a bucket, some soap and shampoo and have us a bucket bath....the water was lovely. What was weird though, was that I had to keep on reminding myself that it was fresh..not salty. We ate lunch and soon after that our new advisor..Carlos arrived, and we were soon on our way.

The pilot boat arrives...

Carlos takes a leap onto the buoy.

This time we tied our boat to another yacht about the same size as Eilean Downan, and went through in tandem....That meant that my rope was tied to the other boat and I didn't have any work to do! :-) I took photo's...lots of them..and helped David a little.

Organised chaos! Tying the boats up together.

They're really nice and snug.

A ship comes in behind us...

Ahead of us is a tug..

The water goes down...

And down...

The gates start to open...

Our shore linesmen are tiny up there..

A giant ruler set into the wall.

Carlos is very pleased!

The ship follows us out..their linesmen are those two huge locomotives.

We went through those locks like pro's, the time flying by. We motored off to one side so that we could untie the yachts and continue on our way under our own engine. We were off to meet the boat that would take our advisor, Carlos, back to shore. In reality the trip through the three locks had taken 3 hours..but it sure didn't feel like it!

There are rather large waves...this was rather a dicey transfer...

The pilot boat captain knows his job!

On our way to the anchorage.

By 5.30pm we were at anchor and Ian was assembling his dinghy to get us ashore. He had to do two trips but he was quick so that we could meet our waiting taxi outside the gates of the marina...

The dinghy is lifted off the deck and lowered into the water. Ian climbs in..

He lifts out the aft section that he'd been standing on a minute ago..

Puts it into the water and swivels it around.

Bolts it together...

In go the lines..

Followed closely by Cassiemira. Ian was soon back to collect David and me.

Quick hugs and sad farewells to our friends. After Ian got back from playing ferryman, they must have sunk down onto the cockpit seats with a grin, a drink and a huge sigh of relief...They were through, safe and sound!!

I don't know about them but David and I were whacked when we got back to the boat at about 8pm. We had ourselves a well earned nightcap and staggered to bed.The next day we had absolutely no energy whatsoever!

What an experience, I absolutely loved it! Can we do that again...please! :-D