Diary for Sailng on Windwanderer.


Sunday 21st July 2013

2013-07-21

Sunday 21st July 2013

Well after not much sleep we were rudely woken by an alarm that I set the night before, bleary eyed I stumbled to the cock pit, and everyone is still off in the land of nod, I could not believe it as the phone was right next to their ears, and no one heard a thing.

That quickly changed I had them all up, would like to say up and running, but there was some very sad bodies around this morning, and no rum left in the bottle...hahaha

I barely had time to get dressed when the next adviser was here, this time just one.

And we were off.

It took a long time to motor to the next lock, so a few crew members disappeared I later found them snoring there heads off in various parts of the boat.

But all hands were on deck by the time we were approaching the next lock, and I must say looking a lot better now.

This time we were being tied up to a tourist boat, they take bucket loads or should say boat loads of people through the canal daily.

So we are all busy tying up fenders and stuff as they are getting close to us, it was quite a big boat and I was a little worried, ok a lot worried the stress levels had not gone down much.

We had Leo at one end of the boat with a rope, Alec at the other end with a rope Isa and Brian standing by and me in the middle with our last fender just in case.

This boat, which seemed like is was barreling down on us full of all these tourists hanging out the boat all watching, The Captain trying so hard to keep the boat still, and all the fenders are too low, far out, am almost having a stroke now as their boat had a very large lip on the side that I knew it would of taken off our top rail for sure, so I run with the fender hold it against our boat yell at Isa and Brian to grab the other fenders and try to hold them up and racing and dragging the fender up the length of the boat we all had our feet on the other boat trying to push it away so the guys could get the ropes attached and lift up the other fenders and tie them properly.

And they wonder why I stress.

All the tourist on the other boat are thinking this is a great joke and all trying to talk to us, I won't even mention what I wanted to say to them I can tell you, it would of been very nasty.

Now the good thing with these locks is that you don't have to tie up ropes, why? not sure, but we only had to steer, but as soon as we got through one lock you have to untie, than they go first and then you tie up to them again in the next lock, I'm thinking are they crazy we have to go through that two more times.

But that's how they roll.... :-/

So we untie, which did not go so well, we came very close to hitting the wall, as the turbulence is very strong and The Captain had everyone shouting at him to do this do that, that was the last time he listened to them after that, as I said in previous posts, we know how heavy she is to handle.

And it did not help our stress levels that we had a huge cargo ship right behind us, coming up very fast.

Am glad u did not see that episode Doug and Ruth, cause you may of been just as stressed as us.

Doug and Ruth our friends that we met in American who took us under their wings and showed us a lovely time in Tacoma.

Well they went with us this time on the live web cam back in America.

I got a bit mixed up with the locks but the camera starts with the 2nd lock once we got all that sorted they were set.

Once again I want to say how this felt so special to us, their excitement and encouragement meant the world to us, so a big big Thank You. You guys are so great. xxx

It was a pity the last camera stopped working as we were about to come out of the last lock, but they managed to see us a lot better in daylight, I was a bit sad that we were just too busy to take any good pictures from the site of us but at least we got one if only of our masts... Haha

No the next two locks went ok, a hairy moment when a rope fell into the water and just having to fend off the other boat so many times took it toll on all on board.

But we made it, we are in the pacific, with a few tears shed from yours truly, not sure from all the stress or just plan being homesick, we are here.

I hit the brick wall before we even found a spot to anchor, after going through all that stress and only having about 4 hours sleep in two nights, I had to go have a lay down, and Isa god love her cleaned up the inside of the boat as best as she could for me, a big thank you goes out to her and all our crew, they all did well.

With no damage to the boat at all, except it looking a bit rough around the edges, nothing that a bit of spit and polish will fix up.

I actually think us two cruisers came out the worst, we sure have a lot more grey hairs than when we first went in, that's for sure, and I'm sure we are going to wake up tomorrow with a lot of aches and pains.

Well tomorrow is another day.