Visit to Ruins of old Panama City.

Ruin of cathedral

Background of Banking District.

We visited the ruins og Vielje Panama, ruins from the time of the buccaneer Henry Morgan ,, who fought the paniards and burned off the city.

Jane studying map of the ruins.

Panama Canal trip January 2014

We anchored in La Plaita anchorage at Panama city on January 5th and Jane,Davids sister arrived on the 9th and we had a lovely but exhaustion time with her as we did a lot of sightseeing of the old Spanish town, the Panama canal, old ruins from the time of Henry Morgan and into the jungle

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Panama seen from the Canal approaches.

                                         

Bridge of the Americas. To the left is North America and to the right is South Amarica.

In the Miraflores Locks.

Large Mærsk cargo ship at Culibra Cut.

Culibra Cut was the most difficult part of building the Panama canal, and thousands of men died in proceess one hundred years ago.

Every evening we went swimming from the boat to reed the sweat of the day and before we relaxed in the cockpit with a sundowner.

Passage from Ecuador to Panama. 28-12-13 to 5-1-14.

Passage from Ecuador to Panama. 28-12-13 to 5-1-14.

At 11.45 on high tide the pilot arrived on board and we left Puerto Amistad at Bahia de Caraques, Ecuador, in style with the rest of the fleet of cruisers waving and sounding their fog-horns.

 Pedro, the pilot, guided us safely out of the river and over the sand bar at the entrance, all for the cost of $50. Definitely worth is! If you saw all that white water breaking and the debt-sounder going to  zero, I think you would also use a local pilot.

On a broad reach , wind WSW force 3, we crossed the equator at 19.40 hours. We had a small celebration and David thanked Poseidon for safe sailing.

In the morning we discovered that we had a problem! 

The tri-sail halyard was stock in the reefing slit on the mast (we have in-mast-reefing). We did not realize it happening when reefing the main-sail in the dark during the night. For two hours we worked hard to free it by pulling the halyard, winching the main-sail in and out.  It was exhausting, but with a lot of hard work and patience we managed to free it.

The motion of the boat was uncomfortable and due to lack of sleep and the continuous movement I was suffering a bit of mal de mar.

We made very good progress for the first three days as we covered 150-185 Miles daily. We hardly saw the sun on the whole trip, which meant that the solar panels did not put any ‘juice’ into the batteries. We had to use the engine to charge up for an hour every day. The generator was on the blink, and we were on our way the Panama to get a new one.

On 31^st of December the wind veered to NW and we went close- hailed. It was raining heavily for a couple of hours during the morning and the current was 2-3 knots against us. David managed to repair the compass light which had become temperamental. The sea became lumpy and the wind abated. We discovered two small tears in the mainsail near the foot of the sail, and managed to reef in past  them.

In the evening during his watch David had a visit from a swallow, which went to sit on his fluffy white head of hair. Black butterflies with green stripes were attracted to the light of the boat and fluttered about everywhere. I had quite a job rescuing them in a jam-jar and letting them loose outside. They seemed to arrive in the droves.

At midnight we said fare-well to the old and celebrated the coming of the new year, 2014, with a wee dram.

On the radar David had seen an el-storm approaching with huge thunder and rain clouds and altered course accordingly to avoid them.

I took over the watch at midnight. We avoided the storm, but even the nearness took out the navigation instruments. We couldn’t see the wind speed or direction, and it was dark night with no moon! The barometer was fairly steady and we did a reasonable progress. The instruments came back on at 16.00 hours the next day. (Raymarine has been contacted re. this problem, and they seem as puzzled as we are). This seems to happen every time we get anywhere near an electric storm. The nav.-instruments go, but they come back 18 hours later.

In the early evening of January 1^st David saw the automatic bilge-pump working and found water spraying somewhere in the engine-room. A hole had occurred in the cooling hose as it was rubbing against the transmission. We found a big roll of wide duct-tape and bandaged it up. The wind was in the North, force 2, so now we motored on in a lovely starry night with the Southern Cross to stern. In the night of 1^st -2^nd Jan outside the coast of Columbia, we were successfully avoiding some storm clouds, but did not manage to avoid them all. At first light we saw the outline of the Pearl Islands on the horizon. David went on the SSB (single -side-band) Pan-Pacific net at 9.15 (frequency 8143) to give our position and was promised a beer if we anchored  at Isla Espirito Santo in Panama by Ben on Canadian S/Y Guyniwer.

In the afternoon we put the hook down next to Ben and Marion on S/Y Guyniwer, our friends from Puerto Amistad. David got his beer.

On the  4^th  of January we sailed to Isla Contadora, one of the Pearl Islands  where David took me out for my birthday dinner in a lovely restaurant, called Romantica, with a beautiful view towards the Pacific sunset.

The next day after 30 Miles of uneventful motoring we put down the hook and La Plaita anchorage at Amador in Panama City. From this anchorage we have an exciting view of the traffic of large vessels, cargo ships, oiltankers and car-transporters and cruiseliners etc,  which are on their way to and from the Panama Canal 5 Miles away.