We had another glorious sunrise, we had to leave later than anticipated as we wanted to be able to see our way out. There was a little wind and once we were in the deeper channel we got the sails up and had a good sail.
Departing at sunrise
Shelter Bay marina is in the harbour at the entrance to the Panama Canal but on the other side. We lost the wind angle as we got closer to the canal, so had to motor. We could see loads of container ships, the sky was was dark and the wind picked up creating an incredible choppy sea.
Mainland looks very interesting
Container ships everywhere
We had to get permission to cross and enter the canal area to get to the marina. It was pretty hairy in the pouring rain and dark skies, with an enormous cruise liner cutting across in front of us. Rowan did incredibly well navigating it all, and then did a perfect manoeuvre into our dock in the marina. Thank goodness it is called Shelter Bay for a reason, it was blissfully calm inside the marina. The Uruguayan mariner master was very helpful.
Enormous Evergreen Container ship, could be the one that got stuck in the Suez!
Look at our chart full of boats
This cruise liner cut in front of us which was quite hairy
Entering the calm of the harbour, and the start of the canal. The city of Colon (a real seedy port town apparently) on the left and Shelter Bay marina on the right
The Centennial Bridge finished in 2004 to supplement the Bridge of Americas built in 1962, both spanning the canal
It was 5pm by the time we were settled and we were pretty exhausted. I tried to do a last load of washing for Luke and George, and of course the machine got an error, so couldn’t spin, so we were desperately rinsing and wringing out their laundry, as they leave midday tomorrow. We had supper at the marina restaurant which was reasonable and toasted our last night together.
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