Last night in morning hours watch I was thinking that the weak wind we had at that time is just right for entering the narrow and shallow passage into Rio Chagres.<\/p>\n
Feeling hungry, I went in the galley to fix me something, when I suddenly felt a lot of wind hitting MaRe. Within minutes a huge squall presented 22 kn of wind, and more or less on to the nose. As the sailing wind died already before, we were slowly motoring to not arrive too early at the mouth of the Rio Chagres. We had this strong wind in the range from 15 – 22 kn for about 2 hours at least. I headed away from our route to Rio Chagres entrance to get distance from land. After the wind went down to about 10 kn, I turned MaRe around and went towards the entrance of the Rio Chagres. However, in the meantime a swell of almost 2 m built up. Too much to go into entrance passage. So we dropped the hook just outside the entrance channel at about 8 m in sand and had 75 m of chain out to damp the wave and swell induced forces on the anchor bridle.<\/p>\n
Hanging like this at the anchor, I hoped the swell goes down and we can carefully go through the mouth of the river. But, there’s always a “but”, the wind and swell increased. What shall we do? Wait here at this rocking anchorage for at least a day until we have better sea conditions? Then ALW proposed to go directly into the Shelter Bay Marina. This was an excellent idea. I called the marina and we were told we can dock already today.<\/p>\n
Anchor up and fully against the wind fire the first 2 – 3 NM. Then the course changed and the wind came more and more from the side until it came from behind.<\/p>\n
We then saw all the vessels coming out or going into the Panama Canal. It is an impressive traffic. Additionally there a many vessels at anchor, for what reason so ever. When we came closer to the traffic separation scheme, I called Cristobal Stn (VHF CH 12) to get permission to enter Shelter Bay. We were asked to watch out for other traffic and got our verbal permission to enter. Friendly, efficient, perfect.<\/p>\n
Behind the long breakwater, we prepared MaRe f\u00fcr docking in the marina. My assumption with stern-to-wall was right. Via VHF CH 74 we got the instruction to prepare fenders just above the water at STB side. The guidance to the docking place was excellent and so was the assistance with the lines.<\/p>\n
And then I met a fellow sailor from Bocas again and bunch of new guys. Very interesting exchange of information. It’s nice to be here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night in morning hours watch I was thinking that the weak wind we had at that time is just right for entering the narrow and shallow passage into Rio Chagres. Feeling hungry, I went in the galley to fix me something, when I suddenly felt a lot of wind hitting MaRe. Within minutes a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}