Georgetown, Grand Cayman

Georgetown, Grand Cayman Island.

Our next stop after Cuba was Georgetown, Grand Cayman.  We picked up a mooring buoy near the cruise ship anchorage and were met by a customs boat which took us to shore to do our clearance.  Once again, as with just about everywhere we have been, the people were all friendly and helpful.  Once we had done our clearance, they took us back to the boat, passed all the cruise ship tourists waiting in line for their boats back to their ships.  They must have thought we were pretty special getting our private launch back…

Baby turtle at the breeding centre

While in Georgetown, we visited the turtle farm where turtles are being bred and released back into the wild.  We were amazed at how large the adults were.  They have a beach for them at the adult breeding area where we could see the huge holes the females had dug to lay their eggs. 

Greeting a stingrau

A special thing we did was take a tour to swim with stingrays.  The tour boats all go to the eastern side of the island, at the mouth of the channel leading out to sea.  The water is only waist deep and crystal clear.  Here, stingrays accumulate to be fed.  They have been doing so for many years, since the time when fishermen coming back through the mouth of the lagoon would discard the unwanted remains of their gutted fish.  Today the stingrays are fed squid.  They come up to the tourists and mill around, tolerate being picked up, patted, kissed and lifted out of the water, as they know they will finally be rewarded with squid.  This they suck into their mouths with quite a force. We also snorkelled in a deeper area of the lagoon, amongst coral heads with beautiful fan coral and many multicoloured fish.

From Grand Cayman Island, we made straight for Panama.  The weather steadily became more humid and once we reached Colon, Panama, we were plagued by tropical rainfall every few hours and extreme humidity in between. We had engaged an agent, Roy Bravo, to do all the paperwork and arrange for our transit through the Panama Canal.  We were measured the day after we arrived and given an “early” slot to go through the canal.  This was a week and a half wait instead of 2-3 weeks which is the usual  wait. It is pretty expensive going through the canal, the fees all up for us, including the wait in the marina, coming to around Aus$5,000.00. Bearing in mind that we would have had to go around Cape Horn (the wrong way i.e. against the wind), if we didn’t use the canal, it was cheap at the price.  Large ships pay between US$250,000 - $800,000.

While we waited, we did our usual maintenance and repairs and took the marina (Shelter Bay) shuttle bus in to Colon to do some shopping.  The road from the marina is full of potholes and runs through dense jungle.  We saw locals along the road collecting migrating crabs (like on Christmas Island) and apparently caymans cross the road at a certain spot, although we were not lucky to see one.  Dimitri was very pleased that he didn’t see any, given that he spent two mornings under the boat in the marina, changing anodes and cleaning the bottom, ready for the Galapagos where they insist on a spotless hull. What we did see was a sloth in a tree in the marina. Every night we could hear the loud screams of howler monkeys.

We took the opportunity of the wait to visit Panama City by bus.  From there we went to the Mira Flores locks on the canal where they have an extremely interesting museum on the building of the canal. We also watched several ships and yachts go through the locks so at least we knew more or less what to expect. 

We were given a departure time of 3am. to go through the canal.  This was changed at the last minute to an afternoon departure, which meant a two day transit.

We left the marina at 3pm., complete with three tough local line handlers, six huge fenders and thick, 150m. long lines and collected our advisor at the designaged spot, just before the entrance to the canal.  We were one of three small boats and  followed a large ship into the first lock. We were nested together, the catamaran against the wall of the lock, us in the middle and a smaller yacht on the outside of us.  

Lock gates closing

Rafted up with another yacht for transit

The gates closed and the lock filled with water, lifting us 30m. in an amazingly short time.  There were some anxious moments when the ship put its engines on to move out of the lock but we managed to keep our position without anyone being damaged.  We all moved on to the next lock and the procedure was repeated again.  The ships are actually dragged by little locomotives called mules and we were walked by four line handlers on the shore, hence the very long lines.

We went through three locks and then found ourselves in a large lake, Lake Gatun.  Here many ships were anchored, waiting their turn at the locks.  We tied up to a large buoy for the night and our advisor was taken back to shore by launch. It was our responsibility to feed everyone food acceptable to them, ie it had to include meat. Arti obliged with curry, spaghetti, and bacon and eggs, with beer and juice. To our horror, our toilets both broke down, one due to flooding by the passangers, all the way to the bedroom. Fortunately we repaired them both fairly quickly.

Going through the Panama canal.

The next morning we awoke to the sound of howler monkeys.

Our advisor arrived at 7am. the next morning and we motored through Lake Gatun and then at last to the second set of locks.  This time we were being dropped about 30m. at a time.  It was a much more gentle exercise than on the previous day. We were put into the lock in front of the ship so did not have his backwash and there is much less turbulence as the water is drained out of the lock than when it is filled up.

While in our locks, a big cruise ship, “The Amsterdam” was in the second set of locks next to us and the passengers were lining the side watching the procedures.  Someone on the ship saw our flag and pulled out a large New Zealand flag and waved it to us.

Ship behind us with the Amsterdam in the adjoining lock

We arrived in Bilboa at around 3pm. where we tied up at the yacht club, dropped off our line handlers and all the equipment and met our agent with our clearance papers and passports. We were also able to fill our jerrycans with water to replace the water we lost when one of our line handlers managed to flood the toilet.  All’s well that ends well.

We had a last shore meal at the “yacht club”, and that evening we left for the Galapagos. It was a balmy tropical evening, with huge flocks of birds coming home to roost, the light of Panama city (a huge city) in the background, as we threaded our way through the myriad anchored ships waiting for their turn to transit through the canal. A long passage awaited us.

Birds going home to roost