Left from Curacao on Saturday morning, or actually closer to around noon. Since there were a lot of miles ahead of me, attempting to estimate the right departure time for a day time arrival is impossible, so you might as well leave whenever you are ready. So on Saturday morning I took my time to go through the routine of making the boat passage ready (put the dinghy away, put everything inside the boat away so it won’t go flying once the boat starts rolling). While I left I noticed my depth sounder was no longer working, all bars on the LCD display are always lid. But, from what it sounds, the depth alarm is still working (that is not much of a help, but it is helps determining where the problem might be).The winds were great initially, together with a tail current of close to 2 knots we were sailing at 8 knots. Wow….!
Well, that wasn’t going to last, and by Sunday morning there was marginally wind left. At that point I wasn’t really sailing towards the destination, but more steering a course that at least would keep some wind in the sails.
This lasted for about a say and then slowly and surely the wind started to increase. Enough to catch up with a boat that had been a few miles ahead of me the night before (a big ketch trying to keep their spinaker filled). The day before I had made my first attempt to fly a spinaker. That was quite a big step, not yet successful, but encouraging in that I got all the lines rigged the right way, got the sock to go up, and got it partially filled. But, since the spinaker pole was still in use to pole out the genoa, keeping the spinaker filled with wind was not possible. The experience was promising enough to give it another try on another day with little wind and not much else to do.
Few more days into the trip the wind was getting stronger and stronger (about 25 knots true wind) and I had already put a reef in. Late in the afternoon I was looking at my sails and decided I needed to put in a second reef. But, going down wind that is not too easy, so I was walking around my boat comtemplating what the right tactic should be. Than I heard a loud bang, and the flapping of the genoa, I look forward, and it was quite obvious that the fore stay was broken. Ouch! Now what to do? I was running with quite some sail up. First thing I did was bring the spinaker halyard forward of the fore stay and tighten it. That at least was supporting the mast as a replacement fore stay. Than I lowered main and stay sail. Than I slowly tried to furl in the genoa (since I had concluded that there was no way to bring the sail down, attempting that would bring down the whole furler system, probably breaking it and having the genoa end up in the water). Somewhat to my surprise I did manage to furl in the genoa. Than I attempted to secure it somewhat more (since it was swinging quite a bit now that it was no longer supported by the stay). The mast seemed to still be strongly supported, so no worries about that. The rest of the night I sailed on just the stay sail, nicely down wind at 4.5 knots, and thing settled quite well.
This all happened about 60 miles north east of Cartagena (Columbia) and I did consider changing course for that. I decided no to since it was not going to be down wind all the way, and without a fore stay sailing close to the wind would create more problems. Continuing down wind was another 300 miles to Colon, but was all down wind, and it was more likely to get repairs there than in Cartagena.
The next few days the sailing was quite good, with less sail up it was actually quite comfortable, even thouhgh the seas got up to quite a height (probably 2.5 to 3 meters). The biggest waves I have sailed in so far, but the waves were also very long, which makes the height of them not that big of a problem.
As days past by I was closing in on Colon, about 100 miles away the current started to be against me. At the same time there started to be lots of debri (coconuts, small tree trunks, big tree trunks) floating by. Slowing down didn’t matter too much, at that point it was quite clear I would end up near the Panama Canal entrance during the night. Given the expected commercial traffic there, I was not going to enter during night time. Once I got within 20 miles I brought the sails down to just the stay sail. Still was going to get there too early, so I steered away from the canal for a while. All that time listening in to the communications between the big boats and Christobal Signal Station (on VHF channel 12). So, once it was day time I started steering towards the breakwater and got on to the VHF. Announced myself on the radio and was told to continue on behind the “Virginia Bridge”, a huge container vessel and come through the break water. This was really one of the greatest experiences, all the huge vessel at anchoring on this cross roads of commercial traffic.
Once through the breakwater I went to the marina at the west side. Made my coffee and talked a bit, waiting for the marina office to open. Then a dutch sailor came for a little chat, and he advised to move out to the anchorage. There is absolutely nothing to do on the west side of the channel, and the city is a $15 taxi tide away. He helped me with the dock lines, and an hour later I was anchored in anchorage area F. Quite a ways from the Panama Canal Yacht Club, but the dinghy engine is still going strong.