Greetings,
We’re on anchor at Escudo de Veraguas, a lovely little island about 50 miles east of Bocas. The trip here yesterday was very pleasant. We had a 3 foot rolling sea. Not choppy at all. Second Star ran well and, with her bottom freshly scrubbed, slid through the water beautifully. When we got here and had the anchor set, we swam to shore or a walk on the beach. There are a few small thatched roof shelters but we didn’t see any people. This morning two local guys in a boat come by trying to sell fish. But they left and it’s just us again.
The wind shifted a lot during the night so we were up lots on anchor watch. The anchor held fine but it wasn’t the best nights sleep. When Capt Johne got up this morning I went back to sleep to try to catch up a bit. We’re planning on spending the day here. Hopefully enjoy some snorkeling or diving later, and do an overnight trip to Colon…
June 5 2013
We’ve made it to the anchorage at Colon where you get measured to go through the canal. We had a very nice passage last night which, for me, included an awesome shooting star, and dolphin in the bow wake illuminated by the bio luminescent (WOW!). We got into the Rio Chagres at 0715 and anchored for the morning surrounded by the lush jungle, and the sounds of many birds and howler monkeys. It was a lovely morning followed by lunch, a nap and then the short trip here.
When we left the river the scenery changed from jungle to a sea of tanker and container ships. Johne counted 37 big ships anchored on the outside of the “break water” and he doesn’t think he got them all. Plus, there were more anchored on the inside. All awaiting their turn to go through the Canal.
Yesterday, before we left Escudo, we did get a snorkel in. We saw a school of Palometa which I had never seen before. They are silvery and pearly in the sun light. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to stopping there again the next time we’re passing that way…
June 8 2013
The last three days have been very productive. Thursday we got admeasured and they give us our transit date, June 21st; Friday Capt Johne met our agent, completed our paper work and paid the transit fees; today we met the ladies who are taking care of the machine work for the water maker and they helped us with where to find other things we need in town.
We’ve had some things shipped down here from the states and the communication with the freight expediter has been frustrating at best. We’ve been try for weeks to get info on exactly where and how we are supposed to get our stuff. The last we were told was it will be coming to the Cristobal Port, a huge commercial container port. Now, we can’t just pull Second Star into the port and say “where’s our stuff” so this morning Sharon and I dropped Johne off on a dock at the port and went into town to do some errands. About an hour later I got a phone call from the head of port security saying he had my Captain, that he wasn’t supposed to be there and that they couldn’t let him leave through the gate. In the end, we just had to come back and pick him up where we’d dropped him off so they didn’t have to admit that he’d gotten where he shouldn’t have been without them catching it (too much paper work involved with that). He could have been in big trouble, especially when he found that he’d forgotten to put the copy of his passport back in his wallet and he had no ID except a PriceSmart card. But all’s well that ends well. He didn’t get arrested and it gave Port Security something out of the ordinary to entertain them. And, now we know the next step to picking up our shipment which will arrive here on Monday….
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