Tuesday January 28
10am and we’re off. Left Vista Mar marina headed for Islas Secas. We hung our fishing poles our for a bit but didn’t catch anything. Maybe the dolphins swimming by us ate all the fish.
We are with a buddy boat Saltair3, (you can find them on YouTube) heading to round Punta Mala, where the Gulf of Panama meets the Pacific Ocean, expect to round the point by midnight before the tide changes.
We cruised through the night, the Milkyway and a sky full of stars, never gets old!
Monday January 27
We rented a car and drove just under 1.5 hours back to Panama City, to check out of the country with immigration and recieve our Zarpe. The word Zarpe is past tense for the word Zarpar meaning to set sail, to raise anchor.
At Vista Mar Marina, their website says they offer immigration services, but come to find out that means the guy in the office takes all your paperwork to his friend who’s an agent. The agent files the paper work, 2 days later and $80 you get your paperwork back. With the car it also allowed us to provision. We stopped at Riba Smith Coranodo, as recommend by the friends we met at Shelter Bay Marina.
We run on weather windows, with one tomorrow,we didn’t want to wait two more days.
Scott and Julie Tagen from the USA, we’re in Panama visiting the canal the day we transited and took photos of us. They found our blog SailingTrance.com left a comment, emailed us these photos. We don’t know them, that was really cool they did that, much appreciated!
Saturday January 25
We walked the beach this morning where the local fishermen come in. We purchased 2 Corvina freshly caught fish for dinner. Thanks to Al’s great knives skills, he descaled and filleted them.
The Panama Pose members here at Vista Mara have a pot luck dinner every Saturday night, we cooked our fish and brought rice with mushrooms to share.
Friday January 24
This morning, Danielle and Stacey left the boat, they are headed back home to work. Danielle will return to the boat after tax season.
Shortly afterwards we unhooked from the mooring and left Panama City. We sailed for about 5 hours, it was 15-20 we we’re cruising just over 7 knots. We arrived at the Vista Mara Marina just before 5. We may stay here a few days, we’ll see.
Thursday January 23
Sightseeing day! We visit the Panama Canal Museum, then walked around Old Town Panama.
We had dinner at Capital Bristo Panama, excellent food!
Wednesday January 22
We spent the night anchored in Gatun Lake. Our new advisor arrived around 9am, we were off. It was a 5 hours or motoring till the second set of locks. Along the way this is what we saw…
After exiting the canal we anchored at the Balboa Yacht Club for the night, shared a celebratory bottle of champagne!
Tuesday January 21
Today is the day we’re on our way! After saying goodbye to our new friends, we departed Shelter Bay Marina at noon, only to spend 2 hours at the gas dock waiting to fill up. There was another sailboat there pumping over 1000 gallons of diesel! And what did Dan do? Yes. He gets on the gas barge to help speed up the process.
We anchored outside of the Marina in the designated area, waiting for our advisor to board our boat. Miguel was in charge of our transit through the Gatun(Gah-toon) locks. Inside the locks the water bubbled up from beneath us as we rose 30 feet.
After exiting the third lock we headed for a mooring area where we spent the night.
Monday January 20
Sue and Al arrived last night, they along with Stacey will help us as line handlers as we go through the canal tomorrow. This morning we took the nature walk with them. Our afternoon was spent relaxing by the pool, we had dinner at the restaurant here, we all had the delicious special of grilled salmon over risotto. Back at the boat we played a card game I can’t spell it but sounds like “you nieve” (we learned fro Kari and Nico).
Sunday January 19
Dan did this, while I was sleeping. Out with the old, and in with the new… he replaced the inverter. An easy job, right? Not so when the old inverter was mounted in a cabinet behind an air conditioning unit.
I spent most of day sleeping. Our friends Sue and Al arrived around 5pm, we all joined the cruisers pot luck dinner, grilled chicken, watched a bit of football then went back to bed.
Sailing Trance 