Our first event of the day was to sail a little further up the river to the point where we could see the dam that holds back the Gatun lake. We then turned to head back down the river towards a waypoint given in our guide where, nearby, there were supposed to be a couple of easy walks leading from a stone bridge. Annie helmed the boat down the river and round the bends. I forgot to mention she had a short spell of helming the previous day. Also forgotten from the previous log was our anchor getting wedged under a rock on our second stop. I had to dive down 30ft a couple of times. The first time to inspect the anchor. The second time to tie a line to it’s apex. Having tied the knot I tried planting my feet on the river bed and pulling it out. This was successful so the line was unnecessary.
Back to yesterday. We anchored near the given waypoint then hunted around for the small bridge. A little further down the river was the very creek I explored the previous day with the bats and the log that I thought was a crocodile. This had to be it. We scrambled up onto the bridge and started to explore. There were no easy trails here. What trails there were were overgrown. I think the trails that we saw were previous users of the guide book stomping around looking for the trails suggested in the guide. I swung my machete to do some clearing of the path but we never got far.
Back on the boat I had received clearer instructions from Sympatica where to find this creek with the pool and waterfall. Heading back to the last straight run before the sea we followed these new instructions and found an inlet matching the description. We anchored then Sam and I checked it out rather than take a laden dinghy with all of us up another dead end. This time we were lucky. We went back and after some deliberation we had lunch then all of us went in the dinghy to the pool with our soaps and shampoos. On the way up the creek Helen was convinced she saw another crocodile. We turned to look but could see nothing. In the end we think it may have been a bow wave from the dinghy slapping up against the bank of the creek.
The pool was quite small but very deep. I was curious as to the depth so I returned to Dignity to get our portable depth sounder. It measured the pool as being 34ft deep. The waterfall was big enough to stand under and get a massage.
We all washed and swam. Annie managed to get all the tangles out of her hair – we hardly recognised her afterwards.
Back on the boat we decided to stay there for the rest of the day and relax. At one point we were passed by a boat called Quartermoon. We’d seen them before on the river. This time we called out and let them know about the pool and waterfall. Later they showed up in their dinghy to explore. When they came out we chatted. We discovered that the guy had gone to the same school as I did back in Reading, UK. Small world.
Today is day 1 of our canal transit. We’ll be leaving here around 8am to get to Shelter Bay marina to possibly take on fuel. We also need to meet our agent there to pick up our lines and tires. Shelter Bay normally need advance warning for fuel requests and possibly advance payment so we may not get any. We have enough to get through the canal many times so no problems if we’re not successful. After our Shelter Bay rendezvous we’ll head out to the flats (an anchorage region near Colon) where we’ll await our pilot who will guide us through the canal before heading to the locks. There’s a small possibility we’ll pick up an internet connection out there. If we do we’ll start uploading the zillions of photos we have pending.
My understanding of timing through the canal is imprecise at best. When we were last in Shelter Bay my blog entry indicated the time ranges we’ll possibly be going through the locks and a link to the Panama Canal webcams. If you have the time and inclination you can watch out for us. If we get a better idea of when we’re going through we’ll put an update out on our blog if we can. I’ve never tried blogging while motoring so we may not be able to do so. We’ll be making position updates as we traverse the canal and will upload them when we can. The positions will show on http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=KC2RIY
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