Silver Lynx, the Laurent Giles-designed 57-foot aluminum ketch that will bear us to New Zealand
28 January
Got to Bocas del Toro, on the Caribbean side of Panama not far from the Costa Rican border, with 50-lb duffel bag of boat parts, fishing gear, and a few swim suits and t-shirts. Signed on to Silver Lynx and started settling in. Several of the parts I brought proved immediately useful in fixing the sanitation system, so we now have two working toilets and can pump out each one’s holding tank. Important.
Heading to the San Blas, about 200 miles to the east, tomorrow. Tough duty, cruising around in paradise for a couple of weeks, but someone’s gotta do it. Then around 15 Feb we’ll head to Shelter Bay Marina, located across Limón Bay from the city of Colon, at the northern entrance to the Panama Canal. It’ll take at least a few days to get all the Canal admin work and scheduling done, during which time we’ll repair a few more small things, install the new sails that are waiting for us there, and do some mass-quantity provisioning.
Seven people on board: Matt and Ana, the owners; their daughters Farrah (age 12) and Zelda (age 10); Ryan and Meghan, from Portland; and me. The boat’s a 57-foot aluminum ketch built for sailing to Antarctica, which was the original owners’ plan. Seven is a lot of people to have on board, but the boat is large and everyone, kids included, is very nice and seems to know how to get along.
(For the non-sailors out there: a ketch is a sailing vessel with two masts, the main being the larger and located more or less in the middle of the boat, and the mizzen being the smaller and located most of the way toward the back, or stern, of the boat. I’ll spare you the technical info about the boat here but may well post it later if nothing more interesting to write about occurs to me.)
I would welcome questions and comments on this page, but it seems that the Comments section is what hackers and bad guys attack, so I’m going to have to turn that feature off. Feel free to email me directly if you’re so inclined. If you don’t know my email address you probably don’t know me and I probably don’t want to hear from you anyway. I likely won’t be able to reply at all promptly, but I will eventually reply.