Passage to Panama

On Wednesday, April 27 we slipped the lines to sail the 770 nautical mile passage from Bonaire to Panama. The crossing was pretty exhausting for most of the time with rough seas and strong winds except for one day when I was able to go below and make bread. It was delicious on the first day while fresh but soon turned pretty hard after that. We filled our days and nights avoiding large tankers and scanning the horizon for sea junk. The ships came very close at night and we had to be constantly alert to their movements on the radar. Even during the day we had to track the ships on radar as some came very close. As we sailed north of Columbia the sea junk increased with the prevailing currents. We saw what looked like a large tree trunk floating by within 20 metres of our yacht. Lucky we missed hitting that at 6 knots. There were dead flying fish on the deck every morning but neither of us wanted to go out and flick them back to sea as it was just too rough. The cabin remained strewn with blankets and pillows which we rotated for that moment when we could go below to catch some sleep inbetween watches. We normally checked the rigging on deck in the fading light and had a quick shower either sitting down or hanging on to the railing for balance. The photo shows Ian securing everything and modelling his new board shorts. Yes he finally gave in and bought some new ones. We would throw our evening dinner together just before sunset as everything became harder at night. The complexity of dinner was relative to the roughness of the sea. I normally took first watch as it was typically calmer then and I like watching the stars as they come out low over the horizon. One of the photos shows the light just as the sun went down. When Ian came up around midnight we usually had to reef the sails and change our course if necessary. We both had our life jackets on and stay clipped on at all times as some of the waves were powerful enough to throw us out of the cockpit. As soon as I went below to try and sleep items in the cabin mysteriously seemed to come alive. I usually spent 10 minutes or so finding the source and securing the items before drifting off to sleep. Some of the items I couldn't locate and they eerily banged and chimed during the night. I could feel Faraway rolling and crashing down with each wave but somehow seemed to be able to manage to stay in bed. When I came up on deck to take the morning watch Ian would usually tell me about all the ships he had seen during the night. Interestingly enough we didn't see any fishing boats or other yachts during this journey until we arrived in Panama. As we came within 40 miles of Panama a huge pod of dolphins welcomed us. They were playing in the big swells and diving across the bow waves. We watched them for over an hour and it was lovely to have them accompany us. I also saw a couple of large turtles on the surface in the same area. There were loads of flying fish or fish flying to avoid the dolphins. We arrived in Panama after 6 nights and 7 days of sailing. Most of the journey we managed under sail except for the last day when we motored into Panama.