GUNS fired!, speed boat chases, explosions!

Panama,

We arrived into Panama after a great calm sail down from Jamaica.

Panama hasn't changed much, well Colon hasn't, it's still a dump,
crime, run down buildings, run down everything for that matter. It
would certainly rank as the most run down unpleasant place we have
visited.

We arrived on a Friday night ( later afternoon - right on beer-o-
clock) so that was ok, we sat on Reverie having a quiet beer
looking over the smog and enjoying the fumes coming out of the 100
or so ships that were here waiting to transit the canal or who have
just come through from the Pacific.

Saturday we were right into the provisioning for the long pacific
leg. Colon is not a bad place to provision, good food and good
prices so we were into it. Monday we would complete the clearance
formalities and get the boat "measured" for the canal transit.

Tuesday we were measured, paid the fees. We would find out later
that day when our transit would be.

Tuesday night we were on the phone to the transit office to find out
transit date - What a shock 3 weeks!!!!, we were thinking it
would be 1 week at best! So Tuesday was not a great day - it was
only to get worse!

Wednesday morning we woke up to the crisp smell of smog, stepped
outside, something was wrong....

THE DINGHY, where's the bloody dinghy!!!! some prick stole our
dinghy!, another yachtie saw them driving off with it and their
panga ( local fishing boat), they came at dawn, cut our line and off
they went with it.

Losing your dinghy is like losing your car, we were without a
car, and couldn't get off the boat. Had to wave down passing boats
to get a ride into the dock to work out what we do next.

The Local panama canal security folks, were able to recover the
dinghy, without the engine, fuel tank, oars etc... it had a few
holes in it as well, thanks to the marvelous efforts of the
fisherman in trying to sink it after they removed the items they
wanted. Shows their intelligence, if you try and sink an inflatable
boat you need to put holes in ALL the tubes and in the double floor
not just two, so their was still enough air in the dinghy to keep a
small car afloat!

After a few phone calls and emails it looks like the insurance will
cover the engine and other items! - thank god! We then spent the
next couple of days repairing the dinghy and trying to source a new
outboard, and after a couple of days we were up and running again.

Back to bad ugly Colon, there are benefits to looking like this. One
is that Movie producers like the look of it!.

Yep movies!!, James Bond. Now we are both big Bond fans so finding
out they were filming a lot of the scenes for the new Bond movie,
"Quantum of Solace", here in Panama was real exciting. Even better
was that the filming of alot of the action boat scenes was being
done not far from where we lost the dinghy. So once we had a new
engine we were off!. We anchored with about 30 other boats. All were
being used for "props" in the boat scenes!!

This was fantastic, being right in the middle of the action scene,
filming was great, we had "bad guys" zooming past us chasing James
Bond ( his double), boats jumping, explosions, this went over and
over again. The work these guy's put into this was incredible, 7
weeks of filming for about 4 mins of film! There was even more
excitement when the "real actors" were driven out to the set to do
the close up shots. All the women in the anchorage were glued to
their Binoculars watching Daniel Craig in action!

Will Reverie be in the movie, good chance. Will Jason or Jo, doubt
it but you never know, hopefully any footage won't end up on the
editors floor.

One morning, Jason was coming out of the shower, naked as you are,
inside the boat walking from the front cabin to the back cabin, and
right outside the windows in the hull looking in ( well it looked
like it) was the camera crew (about 25 people)!, They were filming
the bad guys just as they were about to take a shot at the hero,
Bond. Jason quickly made for the towel just in case the film gets a
new XXX rating!

The filming went on for a few more weeks. This was great as we
needed something to do while we waited in Colon for our transit
date. We couldn't really leave the boat to do any inland travel as
there is always a small chance that the Canal authorities might move
you up the line! and we were keen to get through to the Pacific.

Good news!, we were moved up a few days for our canal transit!, We
called the transit office every day in hope for another move but we
only had the one move. Lucky for us, there didn't seem to be a lot
of schedule changes so we were grateful.

Our transit day was fast approaching, we had 10 old car tires
wrapped in garbage bags hanging all around Reverie, and 5 fenders,
just in case there were any mishaps while we were going through. All
we needed now were 2 more lines ( you need 4 lines of 125ft long -
we had two already on the boat), we were able to rent these from the
Panama Canal Yacht Club ( in Colon) for $15 each. Once the boat was
sorted all we needed to do was fill up with extra booze and food for
the transit. When you transit you need 4 "Line Handlers" + the
Captain, so we needed three extra people. We picked up a young
English couple from a Catamaran "Rahula" and one other Swiss Guy -
Christoph from his beautiful 48ft Halberg Rassy. We first met
Christoph in the Canary Islands! He arrived in Panama 4 days before
our transit from Cuba. Poor Christoph had a 6 week wait to transit!!
Madness!!! - He could sail up to Jamaica, spend a month there and
sail back and still not miss his date!

Transit date March 31 was upon us. Around 8pm the Advisor arrived
on the Pilot boat ( the Advisor will guide us through the Canal).
Our first phase will be to "Up Lock", where we move Reverie into
three locks one after the other that lifts Reverie ( or any ship for
that matter) up to the Gatun Lake.

There we will spend the night before another Advisor will guide us
through the 28 miles of Lake Gatun before we "Down Lock" and enter
Pacific waters. Our up locking went fine, lots of waiting though,
we went through with two other boats "Lady Sara" and "Pauleric". So
on the way up we were rafted up next to Lady Sara, great boat and
great couple Peter and Claire on board.

Once in the Lake, around 11pm, we tied Reverie and Lady Sara around
a large shipping Bouy for the night - Time for a mid transit
celebration!!, Drinks went on till about 2am when it was time to hit
the sack and get some sleep for the next day of motoring and down
locking.

Deep asleep I was dreaming of a stadium and all this cheering!, not
sure what it was, as I very slowly woke up opened my eyes the
cheering kept on going!!, odd it would go quiet then start up, then
go quiet again!. Well the howler monkeys were right into it this
morning, these little guys make a hell of a racket, hence the name,
one yells out then they all join in, then they stop and wait for
someone to start the yelling, it's a very bizarre sound and bloody
loud! Panama has a LOT of really cool wide life, Howler Monkeys,
and others, Toucans, Sloths, loads of weird stuff - Much like
Australia I guess. But Australians don't think our stuff is that
weird - Do we??

Later than we expected, around 9am, the pilot boat turns up with our
Advisor for the day. We have "Manuel" we had a "Manuel" also last
transit, great guy, this one was awesome - we really lucked out
here. Lady Sara got "Captain Cooper" total jerk, full of himself
and quite incompetent. Which is not ideal for us as while we are in
the locks ( after our 28 mile motor) all three boats will be tied /
rafted together again, with Lady Sara in the middle, this means that
their pilot will be in charge of all of us for the actual down
locking. We felt sorry for Lady Sara as you are with these guy's for
a long while and he was someone you wanted to minimize your time
with.

The second phase of the transit went without a hitch. Very hot up in
the lake, our down locking went fine with a few "interesting
moments" no thanks to Captain Cooper. Jason however was getting a
little worked up over the Captain on
"Pauleric". The way it works when you are rafted together, is that
we on Reverie work our lines to keep us in position in the lock when
the water comes in and goes out of the lock - Basically we keep
"Pauleric" off the wall as they are on the other side of Lady Sara,
"Pauleric" through their line work and a bit of engine work keeps
Reverie off the wall of the lock chamber. Well the Captain and crew
on "Pauleric" were not really paying enough attention. They were
more concerned in video recording the event and taking photo's, with
little attention being paid to the situation at hand. So we had to
throw a few glances and words to get them to stay by their wheel and
lines and pay more attention, after all they had Reverie in their
hands!

But Peter on Lady Sara who was basically steering all three rafted
boats did an awesome job, it was quite stressful for him and he did
a stellar job at bringing us all through.

We are now back in the PACIFIC!!!! in Panama City. Yippee!!!!!

More from Panama soon!

Cheers

J&J