Tuesday 16th July 2013
So today we have decided to go around to Shelter Bay Marina.
After a shocking sleep for me anyway, As there was a lot of activity happening all night, a lot of ships going and coming out of the canal, and a lot of smaller ships all over the place, there was so much going on it was crazy.
We later learned that a cargo ship from, North Korea had been stopped coming out of the canal, and checked by the coast guard, they had what was supposed to a cargo of sugar, was actually some type of Missile radar thingy that they were trying to smuggle in, scary stuff.
Apparently all hell broke loose, as you could imagine, with security, Coast Guards, police, The Captain of the vessel faking a heart attack, the 35 crew sabotaging, the Cranes trying to lift off the other cargo to check the ship out completely, this all was happening about half a mile away from us.
I actually watched the ship at around 3am coming in very close to us, but had no idea what was going on, man if I knew I would of been hanging off the back of the boat with binoculars, watching it all happening, as for The Captain, he blissfully slept through the whole thing.
So after organising some stuff with our crossing it looks like we will be going through, on Friday.
There is another yacht coming through from the other side on Thursday, and we have been in contact with them, and are going to have their line handlers come with us as they need to get back to the other side anyway.
We do have to pay them, which is normal and they will stay overnight with us and then do the last crossing the next day,
We will also have there car tyres to secure around our boat, and most likely there ropes as well.
The port authority supply the pilot to go with us but he only stays through the day.
So we sure will have a boat full, and yours truly has to cook for them all. :-/
We have been hearing a lot of horror stories about the canal and a lot of boats come out damaged so we are very nervous going through, at least one of the line handlers coming with us has been through about twenty times so that's good.
There is a web site that has a live web cam, and you can watch us go through if anyone is interested, we are also a bit excited as well, after all it is listed as one of the modern seven wonders of the world.
I will let you know on facebook the direct link and time and all that, later.
So after that took a good chunk of the day we motored around to Shelter Bay Marina, we were in radio contact with the manager here and he was meeting us at a specific spot to help tie us up.
This can be a nightmare for us as its so hard to steer into small spaces, and talk about small, when we got to the spot The Captain and I just looked at each other in fear.
Are you kidding he wanted us to go into this tiny, tiny spot with a boat on one side and a cement wharf on the other, man I thought both of us were going to have a heart attack.
But we made it, with The Captain at the wheel, me at the bow (front of the boat)
Giving hand signals, and throwing ropes to the guy, we made it without any trouble at all, although we did need a very stiff drink afterwords.
So here we sit its pouring rain and once again we have the Howler Monkeys serenading us off to sleep.
Well tomorrow is another day.