We were back aboard Active Light by the first of November. We had left her in the good hands of marina manager Cees (pronounced Case) and his staff at the Seru Boca Marina in Spanish Waters, Curacao. This Dutch administered island is just 40 nm north of the Venezuelan coast. We had selected Curacao as a place to leave Active Light while we flew home on the advice of our Netherlands friends Bert and Gre' (s/v Ciris) whom we had known all across the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. Their advice that Curacao was a safe, secure, and well-administered haven proved to be true.
A marina worker named Christian had agreed to wet down Active Light's decks every evening before he went home for the day for a fee of US$10 per week. He evidently did this work well. We came back to a boat that was dirty with six months of fine brown island dust everywhere, but the decks were clean, tight, and swollen fresh with moisture. Hurricane Felix had given us a scare, as it passed abnormally close to these islands, only some 50 nm from our boat, yielding 35 knot winds in the harbor according to Cees. This resulted in our only bit of damage, as rainwater blew in under the dodger, trickled into the cabin and wiped out, . . . our pencil sharpener! We went to use it one day about a week after returning, found it would no longer crank round and the wood shavings catchment was full of water.

Seru Boca Marina staff members Ruth and Ellison in front of the office.

The laundromat area in back of the marina office.

We brought back so many needed repairs, . . . a repaired radar screen, repaired tiller steering arm, etc. It took us a full three weeks to put things in cruising order again. Our general rule about getting set to go to sea after a spell in port is half a day's prep for each week in port. We had been gone for six months (!), we should have been ready in only thirteen days. But we had a surprise awaiting us. Going up the mast to check for any cracked fitting or wear, we discovered a bit of soft wood on the backside of our port spreader. Like much of Active Light, they are constructed of wood. She has an excellent fiberglass hull upon which most of the rest of the cabin and superstructure is  wood. Neil made the mistake of using a very hard and durable two-part epoxy paint on the spreaders seven years earlier. This did produce a fine, durable, and protective surface. The problem with using such a hard product over wood is that if and when it ever cracks with the tiniest pin hole, moisture can get in and it cannot dry out again. Good old marine rot is very hard to induce on a boat. You must meet three fairly precise laboratory conditions to create it; (1) exclude fresh air circulation, (2) retain fresh water, and (3) maintain a temperature between something like 60° and 100° Fahrenheit. Salt water and fresh air will kill rot every time. It is actually hard to grow, but with this hard paint on wood, after it developed a small crack from a slapping halyard, we did just that! We wound up with a soft area beneath the paint about a quarter inch deep and perhaps a foot long. Had the spreader been varnished, we would have seen the water intrusion years before. Lesson learned! We were able to obtain a bit of Colombian Spanish cedar and laminated two strips of it in place with epoxy glue, varnishing the finish product this time.

Neil reinstalling our repaired spreaders.

Spreader refurbish in the shade of the palm trees beside the outdoor bar.

The refinished and restored spreader ready for duty.

We want to mention an awfully fine couple we met while in Curacao. Bob and Erna had a boat directly across the dock from Active Light and we began to say hello and talk with them a bit. They often brought us local Dutch bakery items. Nancy developed a problem with her left knee and Bob and Erna, who own and manage a large pharmaceutical company in Curacao, were kind enough to take Nancy to a recommended doctor. The knee got better after a week of treatment. Bob and Erna invited us over for dinner one night at their beautiful home. Meeting such good people is one of the best parts of the cruising lifestyle.
Curacao is a very dry island. On top of this, some large hotel chain was constructing a new complex on shore directly upwind from our marina. The bulldozers kicked up quite a bit of fine brown dust which settled on Active Light in amazing quantities.

Our friends Bob and Erna aboard their boat.

Active Light in her landlocked slip seems to sag without her spreaders.

This island resident is preparing to shed his skin.

Cacti and iguanas abound on this island. The terrain consists of low rolling hills punctuated by a lot of rocky outcroppings. Most of the vegetation is of a hardy, thorny, moisture-retaining succulent variety. This island is drier than a popcorn fart!

Lots

of

cactus.

With our boat work done, we began to tour the island and visit Willemstad, the largest town, the only town. The Seru Boca marina is pretty distant from the town and difficult to access by public transport. We rented a small car for the three weeks we were there. Driving around the island was challenging because all the traffic signs were entirely in Dutch and that is not one of the languages aboard Active Light. We had some amazing snafus trying to decipher local road maps. Downtown Willemstad still has many of the pastel multicolored traditional Dutch style buildings. We went several days to local beaches for snorkeling and beach front food sampling. We drove round the western half of the island one day, stopping for photos and lunch as we wished.

Nancy just loves to sit in a sidewalk cafe and watch people go by.

Neil just loves to sit in a sidewalk cafe and watch boats go by.

Flamingos, we learned, are pink from the shells of the shrimp they eat.

A countryside Dutch church and its adjacent graveyard.

Finally it was time to go. We endured in the usual struggle with officialdom in flailing through a series of papers and stamps, it seldom varies. The offices are always miles apart and they always must have one obscure bit of paper that was still on the boat. This time the problem was a crew list and meeting the peculiar office hours of this remote outpost.
Jimmy Cornell warns, in his valuable book, World Cruising Routes, that the bit of water between Curacao and Cartagena, Colombia can be quite rough and wet and we found it so. We had timed our November departure in a month when the Caribbean easterlies are not as strong as usual. Nevertheless, we had a fast and rough downwind dash to Cartagena. Although we took no photographs, we remember passing close to the southern shore of Curacao's western neighbor, Aruba, during the early night hours and seeing dozens of oil tankers that must have been from Venezuela waiting to get to the docks at this oil refining center. (Curacao also hosts a large oil refinery in Willemstad.) While we are aware that the United States administration has alienated and (justifiably) vilified President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, as we sailed by and saw all that oil waiting to be processed, hearing repeatedly from other cruisers that gasoline was available to the public in Venezuela at a production cost of 16 cents per gallon during the winter of 2007/2008, we wondered where the truth lay. Is Chavez the complete socialist scoundrel our government and media tells us he is? How can the Venezuelans produce oil so cheaply and why does it cost so much more in the USA?
Back to something we do understand, sailing in rough water. We made all of the passage to Cartagena under stays'l only or using the roller furling genoa with the running backstay set. We did not put up the main until the fifth day. The wind was typically around 20 to 25 knots and always out of the ENE., Neil is happy to report that it was Nancy who, on the last night out of the five day passage, was on duty during the 3 AM to 6 AM watch, when we were boarded by a wave for the first time in our seven years of circumnavigating the oceans of this planet. Neil was sound asleep and heard a loud squawk from her as her she got soaked. Fortunately, she was sitting, as usual, in the companionway. Her butt is an almost perfect match for this small passageway. That noble and attractive body part effectively and heroically blocked any water from coming into the cabin, thereby keeping the cold seawater off the sleeping captain and simultaneously saving our navigation computer. Furthermore, she was most ladylike in her instinctive choice of expletive and tone inflection. (It just shows good upbringing by her mother!) Neil recalls Nancy saying something like, "Oh, gosh darn, Neil. I have just been soaked by a large slosh of rather cold salt water and I am quite unhappy about it!". What a gal! One could not wish for a better shipmate.
We entered Colombia through Boca Grande, arrived in Cartagena's main harbor at about 1800 hours on November 24th, and anchored just off the Club Nautico marina. Rowing ashore next morning to go through the usual paper flail, customs, immigration, and so on, we passed just astern of a boat with a young cellist playing on the afterdeck. We looked up and our jaws dropped as we stared at the transom of s/v Wooden Shoe. We hailed the cellist and asked if Susan Richter was aboard. She did not respond until she had finished the etude she was practicing. (Talk about concentration!) Susan is and was our friend from La Paz, Baja California, Mexico whom we had not seen in six years! What a happy reunion we had. We wrote about Susan, a former professional cellist, in La Paz Youth Orchestra. Susan is a single retired woman still out cruising and leading the life she always dreamed of as captain of her own 41 foot ketch.

This seems a good place to tell you a little bit about living on a boat in Cartagena harbor. There are aspects which are good, bad, and comical. There are certain practices, attitudes, and influences that are distinctly "American" in style. We were surprised to rediscover these again while in Curacao. First, there is the American-style morning VHF radio net. This goes through the gamut of check-in, emergency, medical traffic, weather, information/questions, items for sale, and even quote-of-the-day. Neil became the morning weather reporter during our stay in Cartagena. The VHF radios are kept on USA frequencies even though we were in a foreign country. No one ever seemed to question this practice. French cruisers are generally marginalized, no one attempts much to talk to them, and they likewise. There were English speaking social groups. And there were French groups. There was the phenomenon of trying to play music in little impromptu bands. The music is usually reruns of Jimmy Buffet, the Eagles, and the Grateful Dead.

Cartagena harbor from Active Light.

The gorgeous state-owned training vessel Gloria Colombiana.

Susan Richter's CT41 Wooden Shoe anchored beside Active Light.

We anchored out in the harbor just off the small Club Nautico marina. The daily charge to row in to the marina, use the showers, bar, restaurant, garbage, etc. was pretty minimal, something like US$2.50 per day. Furthermore, Club Nautico John, an American ex-patriot who more or less ran the club, provided wifi internet connectivity for $7 per week. This was a wonderful boon for us which we enjoyed immensely. With this connectivity, Neil prepared his weather report each morning, getting up at 5 AM to get a good connection.
Another aspect of this harbor we will never forget was the taxi and tour boat launches which roared right through the anchorage during all daylight hours, oblivious to the rocking and rolling their huge wakes caused in the marina and anchorage area. We say oblivious, Neil thinks those boat jockeys were aware of their wakes and enjoyed the havoc they caused. The harbor master has a reputation for supporting locals in boating disputes, so protest was useless.
This being said, and that completes all the negative aspects of our visit, we need to say that Colombians seem to really like Americans. Of course, tourism plays an increasingly important part in their economy and they are happy to see our dollars. But they are a wonderful people and the city is a really beautiful one with gorgeous old colonial architecture. There are fortifications dating from hundreds of years ago everywhere you look. We felt reasonably safe walking around the city, although we are aware of instances of robbery and pick pocketing, even right outside Club Nautico. Neil is not afraid to walk anywhere, biker bars, foreign nightclubs after midnight on the shady side of town, as long as he has his black belt karate wife with him.

View from the convent Pie de la Popa. Active Light is there somewhere.

View of Cartagena from Pie de la Popa.

Restored living quarters of the hilltop convent.

One of the first things we did was to take a tour of the city with fellow cruisers Skip and Cathy aboard s/v Traveler. It was not a pleasant tour. The tour guide was a scoundrel who spoke very poor English, had little knowledge of the sites we visited, charged an exorbitant fee for the half day tour, and expected us to come up with the entrance fees for every site we visited. On top of that, Neil ripped his pants early on in the trip and was in danger of exposing himself throughout. Furthermore, this fellow employed the deceitful practice of taking us to lots of buy-it-here tourist traps. Not a good guide, the name is Hernando, wavy, oily collar length hair, pronounced stomach paunch, black patch over his left eye, a modern day pirate. How did we get hooked up with him, you ask? Our friends asked us to join them to lower the per capita costs.

Restored alter.

We walked a lot in this town. The old part of the city was enclosed within a defensive wall. We will not attempt to replicate here a brief history of all the English and American pirates and opportunists who tried and mostly failed to conquer this old city. That has been done in innumerable tourist brochures. We will just give you a lot of photos of what we saw when we remembered to take our camera and bothered to snap a photo. Nancy really liked the old Spanish colonial architecture with the overhanging balconies festooned with drooping bougainvillea. Neil liked the amazing homemade coconut ice cream sticks sold by Jesse on a corner in old town for 20 cents each.

The courtyard of the convent Pie de la Popa (The Pope's Feet?)

Angled embankments of the old fort of San Felipe.

Fort San Felipe, this photo is not skewed!

Fort San Felipe gun emplacement.

The president's wife was in town that day.

Tunnels, tunnels, lots of tunnels under Fort San Felipe.

A portion of the wall surrounding the original old town of Cartagena.

Susan's visiting daughter Ann at Fort San Felipe.

Cartagena was the setting for the movie Love in the time of Cholera (El Amor en el Tiempo de Cholera) based on the novel by the great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The movie had just been released and was showing in Cartagena the week we arrived. A bunch of cruisers pooled taxi money and went to the movie in the high rise district built out on a spit of land looking out over the harbor and Boca Grande. This was followed by dinner afterwards. Cartagena is also the setting for the novel Of Love and Other Demons by the same author. The subject convent has since become a tourist hotel, but it still stands. It was so lovely to walk around old town and imagine that Marquez was actually here and wrote about these very views and scenes. At any rate, we recommend the novels for our friends and have copies on board if you wish to borrow them.

Resting in the shade just inside the old city wall.

Donkey cargo transport inside the old city.

The clock tower and main gate to the old city.

Traditional colonial balcony, old town.

Cartagena was not the most inexpensive city we have visited. It is known as a tourist destination, even for Colombians, who like to come here to get married. Prices for all rise accordingly, yet one can still eat a local noontime meal for $6. Neil bought nice Chinese-made shirts in old town for $5 each.
A bit of bad news, our #2 laptop computer bit the dust here due to a failed motherboard, not worth repairing. We cannot complain since we bought it in New Zealand in November of 2002, but we still regret the US$2,100 we paid for it there.
We tried several times to get a musical group going at the Club Nautico, but the results were pretty meager musically. Neil thinks that he probably tried too much to control what we played and it just never worked.

Neil on his way to buy more $5 shirts in old town.

There were many small and inviting city parks in old town.

On the corner to the left sits Jesse selling the world's best ice cream.

Just inside the old city wall.

Perhaps the most beautiful little city park in the world.

We were out walking at night with friends after a supper together.

Christmas was approaching and decorations were up.

Many beautiful churches in the old town.

Another view, same church.

These dancers performed nightly for tourists and locals.

Their dance movements were extremely fast, even violent body shaking.

Small wonder they were all in good shape.

Arcos at night with a strange green hue.

Church tower, old town, looking up.

Horse drawn cart awaiting a tourist fare in old town.

Even the Gloria Colombiana got drawn in to the Christmas decorations.

Wooden Shoe with her genoa set too high and the jib sheet led too far aft.

These local fellows were selling lobsters.

Neil repairing Wooden Shoe's masthead lights at Isla Baru.

We got very little sleep on the night passage to San Blas as the seas were pretty rough. Wooden Shoe sustained further damage when her mainsheet traveler track was ripped loose from the deck in the rough seas. We kept reefing down the main, finally dropping it altogether and running under the staysail alone. There wasn't enough wind, 20 to 25 knots, to warrant such drastic action, but we could not find any sail combination that would keep us moving and stop the violently rocking wave action. The wind eased and the sun was out next day for a nice sail on to the islands. Overall, a rather nasty passage. Another owner and captain whom we met in Cartagena, a good and long-suffering lady named Donna aboard the cutter Nintai, broke her vessel's forestay fitting during the same 180 nm crossing. She limped into the San Blas a few days later.
The small island group known as Coco Bandero is a part of the San Blas Islands. These islands are all small, low-lying, and comprised mostly of sand spits built upon coral. They are beautiful and often inhabited by the Kuna Yala Indians, known for their famous mola needle work. We were to learn that they are a rather admirably independent group of people, governing themselves proudly as a distinct culture (The United Force of the Six Communities) apart from the rest of Panama.

A typical little island in the Coco Bandero group.

A small island transport wrecked on the reefs around Coco Bandero.

Susan had been sailing and cruising in Panamanian waters for six years. She was even recruited to teach cello at the University of Panama for a couple of years, so she knew the area and culture well. We were lucky to be "buddy boating" with her throughout Panama. Her guidance, especially when we began dealing with the Panama Canal authorities, was invaluable. We stayed several days anchored in a little sand haven amongst the coral and three small islands, snorkeling, hunting for shells on the beaches (mostly Nancy), and attending to the incessant repairs necessary to keep a cruising boat in seaworthy repair. Surprisingly, we found a small shallow "lens" well on one of the islands. We washed clothes and refilled our shower bags. The fresh water rides on top the saltwater layer deeper down.
The weather had turned fine again, and we were visited right away by canoes with Kula Yala aboard selling molas, crab, and lobster. Some of these people spoke Spanish, so we were in good communication with them. We were lucky in that the first one to get to us was a fellow named Venancio, one of the two most well known mola artists in the San Blas. We bought several of his molas, one for as much as $80. "Prices are going up!" commented Susan. The next day, we were visited by another mola maker, whose work was also very good. We were really supporting the local economy by this time, so we declared a temporary halt to mola buying.

Mola artisan Venancio displaying his art to Nancy. They are beautiful.

Graciela Briseida sold us several molas also and allowed this one photo.

After and couple of days, Susan's passengers got itchy feet to be on their way, so Nancy jumped ship and sailed with Susan, Evan, and Paola to Isla Porvenir, about 30 nm to the east, where they caught a small commuter flight to Panama City. We are not certain if the photo on the right is of Porvenir, one of the more populated of the San Blas islands. Further, it was taken by Joy, one of Susan's cello students, the one playing the cello when we first discovered Wooden Shoe in Cartagena. But the photo looks very much like a typical Kuna village and it is all we have to show you. We mostly stayed out among the uninhabited islands. Joy stayed with Susan, cruising and taking cello lessons for over a year. She is a wonderful young lady, wherever she is, and a very good cellist herself. We hope she does not mind our using her photo. Nancy and Susan stayed overnight in Porvenir, had a meal in a restaurant, compliments of Evan, and Neil took Active Light alone to the next island group, the East Holandes.

Kuna settlement on Isla Porvenir?

Anchored in "The Swimming Pool" in the East Holandes.

"Swimming Pool" view off to starboard.

We remember this anchorage because it was so windy we had to drop back under the lee of the largest island to get some relief from the constant wearing of the wind. Called the "Swimming Pool" because of the water color, we stayed but a few days, yet we were lucky enough to meet Mike and his family aboard the gorgeous Van de Stadt ketch "Gilana". They are from South Africa and Mike is one of the most intelligent, capable, and well-prepared cruisers we have yet had the pleasure to meet. They too have a website which is much better than ours, in our opinion, and well worth the visit. With his permission, we cite it here: http://www.seakin.com/gilana/default.htm
After a few windblown days, we moved to "The Hot Tub", with Wooden Shoe following. We had a wonderful week there, swimming, snorkeling every day, trying and failing to spear a fish (Neil admits to being, without doubt, the poorest fisherman in all the world's oceans!). We hunted for shells, again mostly Nancy, and even found several edible conch. We found an opening in the reef over which we could bellycrawl with snorkel and explore the exciting outer edge. We saw rays, big fish, the occasional small shark, we actually caught a lobster ourselves, and had a wonderful time. Neil spent some hours aboard Wooden Shoe helping Susan repair her ripped out mainsheet traveler track. This necessitated removing the liner to the interior cabin coach to gain access to the nuts behind the bolts, (four part-time days), while the ever- resourceful Mike aboard Gilana welded the broken bolts together with 316 stainless rod. (Yes, he has a welding rig aboard!).

Active Light in the East Holandes "Hot Tub"

This little corner reef was fun to explore in the far deep water shelf.

This is a "purchased" lobster, They have very small claws.

Nancy prepares our lunch, conch and lobster.

Susan furnished the butter. Susan has refrigeration.

Nancy and the well known, even infamous, mola artisan, Lisa.

 
It slithered off the boathook as soon as Mike got near the mangroves.

Small island in the East Lemmon group with a Kuna hut.

After about a week and a half in the "Hot Tub", we had a very easy afternoon sail to the East Lemmon group, another beautiful place. There are Kuna people living there, so we had a lot of visitors. We bought still more molas from a lady who did beautiful work, but would not let us photograph her. We remember a "Carnival" party ashore where we met several new cruisers.
On February 5th, we moved on to Isla Linton and Portobelo. We were beginning to worry about getting a date set for our canal transit. The passage to Isla Linton was about 45 nm and the two boats sailed side by side. We took lots of pictures of Susan sailing Wooden Shoe alone. Her genoa jib is trimmed much better now, set lower with the sheet led forward. We don't recall too much about Isla Linton except that it was a peaceful anchorage and our ship's log shows that Neil made a successful seafood chowder.

Wooden Shoe in company to Isla Linton, mizzen pinched down too hard.

Wooden Shoe all but disappears behind a swell, genoa jib is set well.

Portobelo, a beautiful port.

A lovely bit of coastline as we turn the corner to head to Portobelo.

Ruins of old fortifications at Portobelo.

Does Susan like to talk? Is the Pope Catholic?

Portobelo was named by Christopher Columbus when his three-ship fleet found refuge here during a terrific storm on his last of several voyages to the Americas. It is aptly named, a wonderful harbor of refuge, almost landlocked, completely clear of obstructions with anchorage in 12 meters of water deep within the harbor. Ruins are everywhere of the old forts and defensive walls. There is even a "Careening Cove" shown on the chart, but we do not go in there. We stayed only one night and set off the next morning with a passenger, Susan, aboard Active Light for the first and only time in our eight years of circumnavigating.
We began to have a lot of problems with our main anchor chain about now because the galvanized plating had worn off on coral rubble and sand over the years and the chain is now one rusty mess. Every time we send it out or crank it back in there are large patches of rust flakes left on the deck, on Neil's hands and clothes. We have looked in to having it regalvanized, but we wanted a good hot dip process and never seemed to connect with the right place and time. We hope it has not deteriorated too far to have the 3/8" BBB chain replated when we get home.
A short and brisk 16 nm sail got us to Colon, the eastern entrance to the Panama Canal. Nancy sailed us in through the jetties of the Cristobal entrance to the calm but polluted waters of the immense harbor, dodging anchored cargo ships awaiting their turn to transit. Under Susan's direction, we anchored with other transiting yachts in an area known as "The Flats", infamous for its sticky mud bottom.
We were in Colon maybe two weeks. We hired an agent, Tito, to do all our paperwork for us. The basic fee for a yacht less than 50 feet or so in length is US$600 to transit the canal. A refundable $800 deposit is also required. There are other fees, a cruising permit, the agent's fee, rental fees for four one inch by 100' heavy lines and as many covered tire fenders as you want. The total of expenses comes down to about a thousand dollars to get through. There is also an outlay for food  for your advisor and crew. We found using Tito as an agent, associated with the Panama Canal Yacht Club, to be well worth the small fee he charged. Colon is absolutely a dangerous city to walk around in. Everyone told us there are seventeen (!) local gangs who are all armed and will kill you at the first sign of resistance as they demand your wallet. The answer to this problem, . . . take a taxi everywhere you go. Prices are very cheap in Colon. Taxis cost only $1 anywhere in Colon, $2 outside the port city, Atlas beer $1, Balboa beer $1, a  bowl of ice cream 75 cents, and most meals are less than $5. The US dollar is the official currency here. Neil loved Colon! We rented a slip in the yacht club for most of our time here and had a good time. We met again that wonderful single handing Irishman, Roy, from Peggy West and agreed to assist in each other's transit by serving as line handlers. Roy had been long speaking of the lovely Irene, his fiancée who was flying in soon from Dublin. When she finally arrived she was even more beautiful and congenial than Roy had told us. We really liked Irene.
An excellent book on the construction of the Panama Canal is A Path Between the Seas. We borrowed it from Susan. It is a long read, about 600 pages, but very interesting. We are embarrassed not to be able to remember the American author's name, but it is well worth the effort to find this book. The distance of historical perspective casts an interesting and unflattering light on Theodore Roosevelt and his administration. Those old guys were unscrupulously manipulative, shamelessly leveraging entire foreign countries for perceived advantage to their goals. Are things any different now?

Nancy takes us in to Colon Harbor.

And Susan tells us where to go.

At "The Flats" , a container ship in the background is just entering the canal. Right photo shows a yacht with tire fenders awaiting a pilot.

We began our canal transit on Thursday, February 21st at about twilight. We waited for our pilot advisor in The Flats, Active Light laden with three roast chickens, a big pot of Nancy's famous potato salad and a cooler of water, juice, and beer to feed  Roy, Irene, Susan, and our advisor. We had told all our friends and family members when we were going through and how to access the lock cameras on the Panama Canal website, but it was dark by the time we approached the Gatun locks. We don't know if anyone saw us or not. The Gatun locks consisted of three up locks which left us floating in Gatun lake. We went through as the starboard side tie in a three yacht raft hanging in the center of the lock behind a huge container transport. Our advisor told us everything thing to do. Nancy and Susan handled the bow line to the fellows on the wall, Roy handled the aft spring line, Neil was at the engine and tiller. Irene handed out drinks, snacks, napkins, anything that was needed. What a dear! The middle boat, a large British yacht, had nothing to do. We had no problems. Once in Lake Gatun, a short spell of  motoring and we were tied to a mooring for the night. We all ate like starved fools. A boat came by to pick up our advisor, and the five of us went to sleep. Right photo above is by Irene.

Susan on the bow of Active Light as we approach our first lock at twilight.

Center chamber on a three boat raft in our first lock at Gatun.

We did not know anyone aboard this Brit boat to which we were rafted.

Nancy and Susan, our professional foredeck crew.

Roy and Irene fooling around in the Active Light cockpit.

From the last of  Gatun locks we could look down on the lights of Colon.

Next morning around 0700 our new pilot advisor came aboard and we were underway motoring across Lake Gatun toward the Pedro Miguel locks, about 20 nm distant. The motor through Lake Gatun was pretty uneventful. Our advisor, Frank, was quite a talker, as Nancy says. A nice fellow, but he yakked incessantly. He was very proud of having attended school in the US. To escape, Neil turned the helm over to Roy and indulged himself in a bout of musical inspiration as he played something or other from Active Light's bow, just in case no one had ever played a trombone while transiting the canal. Our advisor was amazed.

Our day #2 advisor, Frank.

Early morning motoring across Lake Gatun.

Probably the UK national anthem, "Never Smile at a Crocodile" and who knows what else was heard from the bow. Right photo by line handler Irene.

Through the lake and back in the canal proper with the big boys.

Titan, one of  four of the world's largest cranes, one "lost" after WWII?

Entering the first of the Miraflores down locks.

Inside the Miraflores lock, tied alongside a tourist boat.

Exiting the last lock.

The newer Centennial Bridge spanning the canal.

Susan phones ahead to the Balboa Yacht Club to secure us a spot. Right photo by Irene shows a couple of happy forward line handlers.

After a night's sleep on a mooring at the Balboa Yacht Club, next morning we all went ashore, said heartfelt thank you's and goodbye to Susan for all her assistance and boarded a bus back to Colon to help Roy and Irene with the Peggy West transit of the canal. This was accomplished with a lot less stress on our part, except for the fact that Neil had been having bouts of rather strong stomach cramps, so he was quite uncomfortable throughout. The transit went well. Irene had prepared a lovely Irish stew of beef and potatoes with a bottle of Guinness stout for a starter. It was delicious. They afforded us more commodious sleeping accommodations than we were able to provide for them. The following six photos were taken by Irene.

Roy is a delightful person with the world's most amiable personality!

Neil takes a turn at the wheel of Peggy West.

A center chamber three-boat raft just astern of Peggy West.

Ships are often designed to completely  fill the 1,000 feet long locks.

Neil, not feeling too well, on the bow of Peggy West with Nancy.

Nancy on the bow and the inward slanting down lock gates.

The Peggy West transit complete, Roy and Irene dropped us off at Active Light on her mooring at the Balboa Yacht Club. We had showers and made an appointment with a (recommended) local doctor to try again to find out what was up with the stomach cramps. Neil had been having cramps for over a week. Fifteen minutes with this doctor at the new Punta Pacifica Hospital and he diagnosed a failing gall bladder that needed immediate removal. Our Aunt Barbara teases Neil about leaving various body parts in hospitals throughout the world, and we guess it is a bit true. The surgery went very well, the nasty thing came out that evening and two days later Neil was discharged from the hospital. Ten days after that stitches were out and we had an approval from the doctor to continue our voyaging to Hawaii.
In the meantime, we enjoyed Balboa, shopping, visiting with Roy and Irene, walking for exercise as Neil continued to lose weight after the surgery. Nancy put a great deal of effort into provisioning the ship for the long passage to Hawaii. This was going to be nearly 5,000 nm leg and last 40 days or so, we predicted. We had (again) free wifi service from the Balboa Yacht Club which was invaluable as we watched the NOAA and US Navy weather sites for wind patterns. It turned out to be a real problem finding wind to get away from the Central American coast, but more on that in our next letter.
We enjoyed Balboa. The yacht club employed two launches with noisy inboard engines to ferry guests back and forth to their boats night and day. We found that system most convenient. Showers ashore were good and taxis to town were easy to come by. Tidal range here was enormous, something like 17 feet typically.

Office is upstairs at the end of the fuel dock. Launch and A.L. to the left.

Shower house and two haul out ramps to the right ashore.

May Lin in the BY office was so very helpful to us.

The captain with a couple of Panama hats.

The original Bridge of the Americas from our mooring at sunset.

A big cargo ship headed for the Miraflores locks as seen from our mooring.

It was unfortunate that Neil's surgery kept us from being able to take advantage of the safe and very economical railway haul out at the Balboa Yacht Club to get Active Light's bottom repainted. For a boat our size, the fee was something like $25 each way for the in and out and very little charge for the lay days. There was a lot of  local labor to hire and Hemphill bottom paints were available for purchase. Of course, Neil is far too cheap to actually pay someone else to do work he could do himself were he not recovering. He couldn't even go overboard in the fairly oily and polluted waters of the anchorage and clean the bottom of barnacles and grass due to the surgical sites healing.
So on the 13th of March at 0945, with fuel tanks and jerry cans full of diesel, the shower bags lashed to the cabin top full of rinse water, and such a heavy load of provisions aboard that water was coming up in the galley sink down below, Active Light set out on what was to become a long and frustrating trip to Hawaii.

Last view of Panama City as we head out to Hawaii.