We had what I thought was a very exciting sail from our last anchorage to Shelter Bay marina. If we thought we’d been playing slalom with the tankers in the shipping lane it was now dodgems sailing into Colon bay. The bay is protected by a massive break wall and the entrance is marked with impressive markers. Sadly we took no pictures as we were concentrating on jibing the boat and more importantly avoiding the tankers coming in and out and jostling for position. In the end we timed it nicely by aiming broadside at a tanker entering the bay and jibing in behind it. It was a bit of a squeeze as the maneuver was based on our sailing slower than the tanker (which we were initially) but the tanker slowed down, presumably to comply with speed limits. We were catching it up through the entrance but were then able to veer off to starboard and get out of the lane. We then had to pick our moment for our final jibe to Shelter Bay marina as the bay was full of anchored tankers and we had to pick our line. To give you a sense of the trip, here is our track of our brief travels so far in Panama. If you zoom out you’ll see our passage from Cartagena.<\/p>\n