Panama!

We made it to Panama!!!

The trip was 868 miles and just over six days, south from Turks and Caicos. Our Track from Florida to Panama:

We sat in TCI for a couple of weeks watching the weather forecasts, to make our passage. Conditions in the Caribbean Sea had been a constant 20-35 kts of east to southeast wind with seas 8-11 feet and some 11-14 feet. Those conditions are prohibitive for passage in our boat! We noticed a lull in the weather arriving soon, with improving conditions the closer we got to Panama! Depending on our position, the winds would be between five and 25 kts and the largest seas we would see are five to eight feet. The forecast for our southbound trip was spot-on, with the winds backing to the northeast for the last 2+ days! There was no wind in the windward passage between Cuba and Haiti so we motored; a repeat from my 2017 trip from Columbia to Florida! We sailed primarily with a double reefed mainsail and a bit of genoa. As we got closer to Panama the winds backed from east to northeast and at times north-northeast so we dropped the main and ran with mizzen and genoa, that was fun! The last two and a half days made up for the first four! We not only had fun sailing/surfing Dea Latis downwind but I was able to recover from four days of miserable seasickness! LOL!

Click on the pictures for full screen.

The trip was mostly this (water):

While motoring south through the windward passage we were surrounded by a huge pod of dolphins, probably 40-50! Awesome! They played around our boat for about 30 minutes then disappeared.

There was traffic crossing the Caribbean Sea but not too much. Once we got closer to the canal zone the commercial traffic began to increase. Each triangle is a ship:

Outside the Caribbean entrance to the canal zone is a huge breakwater, the ships on the horizon are anchored just outside:

The triangles multiplied! As you would guess, there are hundreds of ships here, fortunately most of those triangles are anchored:

We radioed Cristobal Control Station for permission to enter the breakwater but couldn’t reach them until we were about three miles out. “Dea Latis, sailboat, three miles from breakwater, requesting entrance, destination Shelter Bay Marina”. We receive a dismissive reply “…proceed…”.

East breakwater, entrance to the canal zone, winds and seas are up:

Cristobal Control Station controls the ship traffic in/out of the Caribbean side of the canal zone. Sooo it would have been nice to get a heads-up on this:

…a 900 foot container ship heading north, exiting the breakwater.

Fortunately earlier Tanya noticed one of the triangles moving toward us, but it would have been nice to hear that from the traffic controlling agency. Once the ship passed, we cut across the entrance to find shelter behind the west breakwater. Tanya put up our yellow Q flag, west breakwater in the distance:

Instant calm behind the breakwater:

Inside the breakwater is of course a huge commercial anchorage:

We headed west between the breakwater and the anchorage, following an occasional green channel marker, to the entrance of Shelter Bay Marina. The marina answered the radio promptly and we received our docking assignment. We were greeted by Emilio and Eddie who quickly guided us in, helped secure dock lines, and gave us a quick introduction to the marina. Very nice!

We cleaned up, checked in with the office and completed immigration and port captain formalities. Immigration and port captain offices are both on site but the port captain seems to keep irregular hours. We were about ready to take a taxi into the city to the main port office when the local official showed up…We are legal now!

We had a wonderful dinner on the patio of the marina restaurant, enjoyed a few of the local beers, and popped the top of a bottle of bubbly to celebrate our trip!

Canal traffic in the distance:

We want to experience a canal transit before ours so we are going through the canal on another boat first. We met a nice couple on our dock and volunteered as line handlers for their transit. They feed us and pay our way back to the marina. Good deal! We are leaving on their boat tomorrow and should be back Monday. Once we get back we will start the formalities for our transit. We are in no real rush to get through the canal. Our trip to Panama was rough, it took several days to put the boat back in order, and for us to recover! We will relax here for a while. Shelter Bay Marina is built on the former Fort Sherman, which was a US Army base until 1999. We want to look around what is left of the base, see the area and relax by the pool for a bit.

Our next trip is 3800 miles…