We had been told the guys were arriving at 10am to get the dagger board back in, what a rude awakening when they arrived at 7:30 before my second cup of tea! The good news is that it went back in like a dream, everyone could go off to their Christmas holidays early and happy, including us!
The fibre glass guys
We moved PolePole over to the dock so we did not have to use the dinghy to get it across to her
Look at the size of the dagger board in comparison to Rowan, three times the height
It’s in, and goes back down like a dream
Then it was a mad dash to the sail loft to see if the bag was ready, he wanted two more hours to get it sorted, which gave us time to get the boat ready to depart. We had decided to head north, if it was getting too late in the day to head for Bocas del Toro then we would head to the Chagres river. The German boat who had such a to do yesterday, left this morning with more screeching and yelling as they came around the end of the dock and smacked into it. Turns out according to Thomas that the German Catamaran left with one working engine which makes it pretty hard to steer, they are heading up the coast where they can be hauled out to replace the troublesome engine, what a Christmas holiday nightmare! Poor Thomas is an Austrian guy on a boat diagonally opposite us, who Rowan had treated like a long lost friend when we arrived because Rowan follows his blog, but quickly discovered that he talked non stop, mainly about himself, so Rowan ducked and avoided him the rest of our stay!
Luckily Rowan’s back was feeling a little better, by midday we were back at the sail loft lugging the big sail bag back to the boat. Some very friendly neighbours came and helped us get it back on which was a great help.
With that on, we departed and headed out the marina and into the hurly-burly of the Panama Canal. I counted over 50 enormous big container boats. We had to pass through the narrow harbour entrance after clearance from port authority, typically the vhf radio wouldn’t work, luckily we found our emergency kit one, so we finally got contact and feeling very small compared to all the enormous container boats around, made our way back out to sea. We took a sharp left and headed north.
Boats waiting in the harbour
Looking towards Colon
The lighthouse Beacons for the harbour entrance, you have to get port authority to pass through
We hugged the coast to the Chagres River
It was a stunning sunset, the noise of the birds, the parrots and toucans heading home to roost. I spotted a huge alligator on the bank, we really feel in the middle of the jungle all on our own.
The tricky entrance to the Chagres River
View of San Lorenzo Fort at the entrance
View of San Lorenzo fort from the river
Looking back toward the fort and river mouth
The still, calm river with thick, thick jungle all the way to the river edge
The jungle
Our only issue was we finally anchored and could hear a bilge pump in the guest hull going crazy, we went down and discovered it swimming in water. The boys had opened the inside window in the shower and we hadn’t noticed so when we hit the choppy waters of the harbour entrance the water had poured in. Lesson learnt, to check every single window. We had to spend a couple of hours emptying the bilge and drying all the stuff we keep down there. One pack of 12 toilet tolls had done a very efficient job of absorbing water!
We went to bed exhausted but happily serenaded by frogs and howler monkeys.
Spot the Toucan!
Putting down the anchor for the night
Discover more from sailingpolepole.com
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
