It's been a long time coming and a long journey to get here. We've had our share of hiccups, but all in all, we are very fortunate and grateful to have finally made it.
Our sail from Colombia took us just about 3 1/2 days, and the weather front, the heavy storms, that were coming , came in about 36 hrs sooner than expected. Great! Right?
Rain, rain and more came down in buckets, with winds gusting to 40kts (knots). With all that, comes the waves, the swell and subsequently the rocking of the boat! It was a rocking all-ways kinda thing. We had the foresail up to stabilize us a bit while we ended up motoring into it the last 16hrs. Ugh. That was the perfect roll timing to get seasick. We held it together pretty well, but it is an involuntary diet I do not recommend!
Seas were pretty grumpy to have water come in on both sides , giving the Gem a nice wash! It felt like being in a washing machine! 🥴
For the first time ever, we took a breaking wave squarely over our stern which filled the helm position knee-deep with water! 😮
It was the first time in a long time, about a year, that we were chilly! Funny, huh?🤣
Needless to say, sleep wasn't much to be had during the final 24 hrs of that sail leg. But that is usually no big deal when we know at the next "stop" we can rest up safely.
We arrived safely inside the huge anchorage in the Panama Canal Zone, the next morning, around 0100 hours on December 19th and decided to for safety reasons to just drop the hook, go to sleep and continue on once we all rested up.
The marina was our place to go, to checkin, take care of the required paperwork with its payments and hopefully get some groceries, fresh water and get the Canal transit date taken care of.
Here we wait!
