Overseas Express - Log 2 - Finished Transit and La Playita

3rd Feb - 2016

"The Pacific!" was shouted in the last lock as the doors finally opened and horns were ringing. We used our fancy handheld brass fog-horn which was gray, old and loud. Now the line handlers could finally rest their hands and backs, the skippers lean back and we could finally call it a day.

The transit was over and took approximately two days. Our advisor Victor was a really great guy and we gave him enough food and drinks, even though he and his collegues joked about his never-ending hunger. We had some baguettes before the Gatún Locks and we had burgers between the two last locks. The line handlers on land, who managed the loops over the bollards, also got a nice surprise in the end. We filled a plastic bag with some cans of soft drinks and let it go up with the bowline.

The Panamá Canal transit was a great experience for us, but it was also quite challenging to maintain the distance to the lock walls when we were lowered down. After all we were around 50 tonnes, as we nested with Paradise Found and Paw Paw - two quite large catamarans of 46 and 50 feet - each cleat had many tonnes to hold.
Unfortunately, Paw Paw's back cleat went off and we had a hard time with a lot of cursing, trying to get the nest the right way. It all went OK in the end, but we were really exhausted by then.

We got Stefano from the ARC Rally Control over after the transit and got safely into the La Playita Marina after messing around on the wrong side of it. We allowed ourselves to have a rhum-punch and celebrated the Pacific arrival with carbonated wine.

We are curious what the WARC will give us in the future and we look ahead to great experiences further on.

(we experience bad internet connections so we update whenever there is free or good WiFi)

-Overseas Express: Kirsten, Alex, Eric and Tor Odin