After leaving the islands of Hollandes Cays on the 11th March, we sailed West to the island of Linton and the marina of Linton Bay. This was to be our 'check in' point where we bought our Panama cruising permit and took a taxi to Portobelo for passport control and entrance stamp.
With that done we rested in Linton for a couple of days and found an adequate weather window to continue towards Bocas del Toro.
Leaving the shelter of Linton Bay we headed out into the Caribbean and across the huge shipping lanes North of the canal entrance of Colon. This was fairly hectic because the ships move fast, and a yacht moves very slowly in comparison. Thankful for our AIS system we managed to avoid the ships and continued West over the underwater volcanic plateau of 'Banco Volcan'.. This feature provided us with some very unusual waves including tidal turbulence. A strong 2 knot tide flows down the Panama coast heading west and meets the Trade Wind swell at the volcano so naturally there are wave overfalls.
It took us 30 hours of sailing and motor-sailing to get to Bocas, where we dropped the anchor just outside the Bocas Marina where the batteries were to be delivered.
We stayed at anchor for a week while we received and installed our new Trojan wet cel batteries and disposed of our old ones.
 |
| anchored in Linton Bay |
 |
| Linton Bay Marina |
 |
| Crossing the shipping lanes at the entrance to Panama Canal |
 |
| Dolphin escort |
 |
| This is our route through the shipping lanes (pink lines) and over the shallow Banco Volcan |
 |
| Arriving in Bocas del Toro |
No comments:
Post a Comment