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Showing posts with the label Shelter Bay Marina

Panama Canal Transit in a Sail Boat - Pacific to Atlantic

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  Jen and I at Brightnest's bow, transiting the Panama Canal. Here’s something you may not have heard: The birding and wildlife in Panama were just as fantastic as anything we encountered in Costa Rica. Panama doesn’t get as much buzz and press, but i t has all the natural diversity you would expect from its geographical location on an isthmus connecting North and South America.   But first, let me catch you up, and bring you along to Panama with us. We departed Costa Rica on Feb 13 th , bound for Panama City. (By chance, we were always departing on the 13 th !) We settled into our watch schedule of 4 hours on/off. We promised ourselves that we would have a nice dinner in Panama City since we spent Valentine’s Day on passage. At some point early on, we lost the wind vane of our anemometer. We still had wind speed data, and for the first days, the wind was between 5 and 12 knots, starting to pick up above 15 knots on the night of the 14 th . From then on, it was 15-20 knot...