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On June 18, we packed up the boat for safekeeping in Puerto Penasco for hurricane season and started our driving roadtrip through the western USA…Our route began by crossing the border, a quick stop at Pipe Organ National Monument and then on towards Joshua Tree National Park.  We camped all summer.  We’ve found some great apps for finding free campsites which happily worked out right away.  It took a bit of adjusting to unloading the camping gear, learning how to best cook at campsites, reloading the gear…and finding enough space for everyone in the car (including Willie).

Joshua Tree NP Fun Facts

1. Joshua trees are yuccas, not your typical tree.
2. Joshua tree means the tree of life.
3. Roadrunners are real and they eat scorpions.
4. Deserts are HOT!  Shade is good!
5. Hiking hours are 5-8 in the morning and evening in the desert summer.

Our next stop was Sequoia National Forest.  The Trail of 100 Giants turned out to be one of our favorite “big tree” hikes.

Sequoia Fun Facts

1. Sequoia roots can spread out an acre in search of water.
2. Sequoias drink 500 gallons of water each day.
3. Sequoia is the only word in the English language that uses all of the vowels-A,E,I,O,U.
4. The lowest branches on the sequoia are high up from the ground which keeps them from burning down in fires.
5. Tannins make them red and heal burn marks.

Our next stop headed us back to the beach.  We visited Big Sur, home of many car commercials, surfer towns, cool beaches, wildlife and beautiful scenery.

Big Sur Fun Facts

1. Big Sur is the stretch of 101 from San Luis Obispo to Monterey.
2. Hearst Castle is the most visited state park in California.
3. There is an elephant seal rookery just north of Hearst Castle.
4. Th road has closed due to mudslides, falling rocks, and wildfires quite frequently.
5. There is a heard of wild zebras remaining from Hearst’s zoo.

We visited Stanford.  We all decided we want to go there.

Stanford Fun Facts

1. Students jump in the now chlorinated fountains for fun.
2. There are more bikes on campus than students.
3. The waitlist for getting married at the church is 3 years.
4. Themed housing—foreign language, outdoors, sports, clubs for everything, over 700.
5. Love the tree mascot!

We headed north along the coast to Redwoods National Park.  

Redwoods Fun Facts

1. The average life span is 600-700 year old, but they can live to 2000.
2. 93% of all redwoods were chopped down.
3. They are the tallest trees in the world.
4. Their pinecones are the size of a lemon and the seeds are the size of an oat.
5. They are part of the sequoia family with tannins that protect them.

We continued up the coast north, to the Oregon Gold Coast.  Beautiful beaches and rocks.  Then, out to Crater Lake…which was still quite snow covered on June 26th.

Crater Lake Fun Facts

1. It is the deepest lake in the USA.
2. It was the sixth national park.
3. It is the clearest lake in the world with visibility to 143 feet.
4. Blue, blue, blue!
5. It averages 43 feet of snow each year.  Cold!

We continued heading north for a quick visit to Portland, Oregon.  We hit most of the tourist spots and then headed out to Mt. Hood.  We saw a sign for a 4th of July Lumberjack festival, so we decided to check that out.  We stopped at the local Goodwill to find flannel for everyone for the festival (and to keep us warm with all the cold weather and rain)!  The festival was pretty fun!  From here, we headed to Mt. Rainier National Park.  But, Mt. St Helens was on the way, so we stopped there first and saw all the volcano damage.  Amazing how an eruption changes the landscape.  Next stop is Olympic National Park.  We did a lot of hiking in the rain forest, at the beach, and up in the alpine zone.  What a diverse park!  We all want to spend more time in Olympic when the weather is better.  Next stop is North Cascades National Park.  Sunshine, blue skies, and huckleberries abound.  We really enjoyed this park—so much so that we all ached after lots of great hiking.  We made huckleberry jam at our campground, did a 10+ mile subalpine hike with Willie, and enjoyed all of the short hikes through the park.

 For the hurricane season, we took our boat out of the water so that we could make some repairs for it, and we could leave it to go on our road trip. 

The day before we hualed out we anchored just minutes away. We were able to get the sails down and fold them up. The next morning we went to the dock and we topped off our fuel. We then went towards the other dock where we were getting hauled out in. We got tied up and everything, and it was a bit stressfull, but it was good. We started getting raised up, and our boat was out of the water and we were just floating there. Fenton, Heidi, Sally, and I all got off, but it became to far for Willie to jump, so Mom and Dad stayed. 

They drove our boat in the slings to the yard. It was boiling hot out that day! The boat got all set up.

The next couple of days it was also really hot! Sally had her birthday and we had a strawberry orange cake, which was good!  She dyed her hair with dye she got for her b-day. Dad left later that day to go get the car for our road trip.

The next few days we cleaned up the boat a bunch and got ready to leave it for the season. We cleaned the lines, clean our lockers, cleaning all the walls with bleach, took out all of our cans and other things that could explode, and among other things, we packed up things to bring on our summer road trip. It was busy and really hot when we were here at first, but we got a lot done!

Back to the Blog…

Hello from Mexico!  We have had a long hiatus from our blog as the kids thought it would be easier to document our travels from FaceBook this summer on their new Scouts Afloat FB Page.  So, we will give you our summer highlights over chunks of time traveling up the coast of Mexico by boat and through the USA and Canada this summer by minivan…all with Willie the wonder dog!

The topics are as follows:

Coming up in our next issues you will learn all about our summer travels…

Sailing up the Sea of Cortez in Mexico

Haul Out at Cabrales Boat Yard in Puerto Penasco, Mexico

West Coast Drive of the USA by way of the Cascades Mountain Range

Canada escapades

Driving South Through the Rockies

Family in St. Louis, Grammie’s beach, Ridgefield friends, Wilmette friends, St. Louis Take 2

The last leg of our road trip…Colorado, 4 Corners, Utah National Parks, Glen Canyon, Grand Canyon and home to our boat in Puerto Penasco

Quick but super fun trip to Yosemite, Sequoia National Parks, and Joshua Tree

Las Vegas Council Grand Camporee in Nevada, Lake Mead recreation site

Phoenix WFA class, parts pickup, Halloween with friends in the USA

Halloween with friends in the Boat Yard

Dia de Muertos with friends in Puerto Penasco

Splashing…coming soon!

Sailing North Through the Sea of Cortez by Julie

Up the coasts of Mexico by way of SV Love & Luck…a quick trip for so many miles!  We traveled these 2000nm between May 8 and June 8, 2019.  

I believe we last left off in Chiapas, Mexico where we did an awesome land tour with our good friends onboard Utopia.  From there, we had a 6 day sail to Zihaute, Mexico.  We had the best dolphin show ever on Mother’s Day.  Nearly 1,000 dolphins surrounding our boat, doing tricks, and playing for 30+ minutes all for us.  So cool!  Zihaute had a pretty cool vibe—and we learned about bringing barrels of fuel aboard ship for fueling up.  We enjoyed walking around town, doing a little shopping, and only 1 person ended up in the water while we were learning this new fueling trick…

From Zihaute, we sailed directly to Puerto Vallarta, La Cruz, Banderas Bay—all the same place (or very close together for us newcomers) with lots of different names.  It was a 2 day sail and we arrived during a dinghy race.  The kids met Cat, who runs the La Cruz Kids Club.  They immediately signed up for volunteering for Kite Boarding Races the next day.  Cold, fun, wet, and exciting.  We met some new friends on Totem, explored town (where we expect to spend some time this winter), and got caught up on daily activities:  laundry, fuel, fitness tests for Personal Fitness MB, vaccine appointments, and provisioning.

From Puerto Vallarta, we headed to Isla Isabel, Mexico’s Galapagos.  The little island was amazing!  We hiked all over the island with the little fishing village and all of the large frigate birds and blue footed boobies.  Snorkeling was pretty cool too.  Heidi enjoyed a prebirthday celebration with our friends on Utopia and Totem.

From Isla Isabel, we headed to La Paz.  We arrived late at night and anchored just outside the entrance to La Paz.  The scenery in the morning was amazing—a beautiful deserted desert island.  And it was amazingly chilly—wonderful!  We celebrated Heidi’s actual birthday on the boat with spaghetti and vodka sauce.  Delicious.  The ice cream shop in town was also quite good!

From La Paz, we headed north to Isla San Fran.  Once we arrived, the kids explored the pink salt flats and looked for agates at the beach.  No luck finding any gems—but it was good to get off the boat.  

From Isla San Fran, we headed to Agua Verde.  We found the advertised goat cheese here and hiked out to the point over looking this very green bay.  We practiced line and tender for the BSA and quickly showered and dried off because the water was COLD!  A very beautiful bay and almost all to ourselves.

From Agua Verde, we headed to Santa Rosalia.  We walked through the old mining town with the Eiffel Church (yes, the builder of the Eiffel Tower).  We went out to dinner for celebrating Heidi’s birthday properly—I think that made 3 birthday celebrations for Heidi (just how she likes it).  We visited the mining museum, caught up on email, phone calls, and ordering stuff we need next month for the big road trip…We also enjoyed great icy treats with mangos, tamarind, and sweet and spicy flavors.

From Santa Rosalia, we headed to Puerto Don Juan.  This was a neat little hurricane hole that was not fogged in when we were hoping for a spot to stop.  There was a gap in the rocks to see sunset across the bay.  There were some lonely coyotes by the water’s edge and desert scenery in all directions.

From Puerto Don Juan, we headed to Puerto Refugio.  The sea lions were the most amazing part of Puerto Refugio.  There is a sea lion rookery here and all of the moms, babes, and juveniles hang out here while the males go off swimming.  They are some of the loudest, barking creatures that I have ever heard.  They are very curious creatures and also seem to be very silly.  It was really fun to dinghy up to their island, let them get used to us to know we weren’t a threat and then watch their antics.  They flopped, rolled, slid on their bellies, barked, swam and closely watched us.  When we were leaving the island for Puerto Penasco, a juvenile male swam right by our boat, jumped out of the water, twisted his body to bend at the waist and look at us upright, looked directly at us and barked and yelled like crazy.  It was one of the most amazing animal encounters I’ve ever experienced.  Willie didn’t know what to make of him!  Hopefully we’ll get to go back to swim with them when it is not mating season.

Finally, from Puerto Refugio we headed to Puerto Penasco and currently, that is the end of SV Love & Luck’s sailing log.  We will fill you in on PP for our next update.  Thanks for reading.

 Hey everyone! I am going to write about some land travel we did in Chiapas, Mexico. This was from a long time ago, we are on land now traveling the National Parks now. I figured it would be better to post it now though then never. In Chiapas, we went and did some land travel for a week with our boat friends on Utopia. It was a ton of fun. We saw lots of different Mayan ruins, heard and saw howler monkeys, saw some beautiful waterfalls, walked around to different towns, went on a boat ride through a canyon, and ate lots of tacos, roasted chickens, and quesadillas 😉 Sally posted an overview of the trip more in depth. Today I am going to write about Yaxchilan ruin.

      It was a cool day out, a bit cloudy, it seemed like the weather before it rained. Everyone had just eaten sandwiches for lunch. The group was going to go on a boat ride to a ruin. We started walking down a dusty dirt road. We got to the entrance of the national park, and we went to see which tour was the best price. After the adults negotiated the boat ride and a tour there, we all went down to to the beach. All of us got onto the boat, and it started making our way through the river.  The water in between the land was separating Guatemala and Mexico, so we had almost been to another country. I used to think that most countries are different, even like their landscapes, but I wouldn’t know by looking then which country was which besides what side of the river it was on.

      The river water was a really pretty color, it was like a chalky blue and a beautiful contrast to the deep green of the mountains and jungle. We were on the boat for about 15 minutes. We pulled up to a rocky beach and we all jumped off the boat. We then started walking up the path. As soon as we were at the site , we could see (and hear) howler monkeys jumping around the branches. I even saw a couple of monkeys jumping from one tree to another, when the trees were at least 5 feet apart. We headed to look at the ruins.

    We started off looking at the old ball game court. The Maya people used to play a game that is now called the pelota or ball game. They wore stone things that were on their hips and elbows to hit the ball into a hop. It was a bit like basketball, but they hit the ball their hip and elbows. In every village, the game differed a little, but in the ruin we visited they said that they used to play one on one.  The ball was made of the sap from the rubber tree. In this town, they used to sacrifice the people that won the game. They believed it was an honor to sacrifice themselves to the gods.(There was a ruin we went to the day before they didn’t sacrifice anyone.) We saw carvings of the ball game players, and they had the amount of stairs that they walked down after they won and were about to die. The Maya people believed that if you walked down the stairs you defeated the devil, and you were going to go up with the gods.  After we finished looking at those carvings, we walked up about 200 stairs to get to the main ruin were the royalty lived.

   There were lots of carvings in the wall. I think that is so amazing that the carving have stayed for so long, and can tell us how people used to live. There was also a pretty big statue inside. It was headless. Our tour guide told us that the head was in the next door. It was really dark and smelled like earth and wetness as we made our way out of that part of the ruin. We saw the head, it was surprising to me that the statue still looked brand new, even though it was from 200 AD. We learned that a legend said that if anyone ever put the head back onto the statue, the world would end. The poor statue will never get his head back!

 What I thought was the coolest thing about it, was that you could imagine what it would be like. There was howling, croaking, and you were surrounded by jungle. We were the only ones there at that site. We walked around some more, and soon, we started heading back to the boat. We started walking back to the hotel. It was a great afternoon!

Hi all – as you have noticed, we haven’t been updating this blog in quite some time… To help speed up the posting process, we’ve switched to a new Facebook page to post – Scouts Afloat.

Why the name Scouts Afloat?

Since the Boy Scouts of America transitioned to BSA Scouts and began admitting girls, Heidi, Lucy, and Sally have joined and are working hard to potentially be in the first class of female Eagle Scouts. We are using this site to share our stories…

BTW – we are now on land, about 45 days into a road trip through the western US and Canada National Parks. We’re in Yellowstone NP – (although we’ve only posted through the start of the Canadian Rockies).

Thanks – and look forward to connecting through Scouts Afloat!

A few weeks ago, we hiked the tallest mountain in Panama, Volcan Baru. We did the whole hike in one day, on foot, no cheating. The peak is at 3,475 meters, and we started around 2000 something meters. Besides going up (and down) about a kilometer, we also hiked about 14 km from the bottom of the trail to the peak.

We started a day before we got to the peak ago, waking up at 11:00pm so we could drive about 2 hours to get to the bottom to start hiking at 1:00am, which would get us up the mountain with enough time to see sunrise, around 6:30am. Normally going to sleep around 8 would be difficult for me, but the fact the fact that we did a three hour hike earlier that day made it slightly easier. This advantage was canceled out by the intense heat we had due to a lack of wind on the boat. So after about half an hour of tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep. After talking with everyone else the next day though, it seems I was the one of the lucky ones. Some people couldn’t sleep at all, be it nerves or heat.

Anyhow, we all got up and ready, and we drove to the foot of the mountain. The first thing I felt as soon as we got out of the car was that it was COLD! I wore zip-offs (what they lack in style they make up for in functionality), a long-sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, and a windbreaker. We were dressed warmly as we’d learned that the peak would be close to freezing, which is like a 50 degree difference from the boat. We also had flashlights, because when you hike at night, it’s dark. The beginning of the hike was nice; we all had energy, we (I, at least) were excited, and the hike started off pretty mildly. We saw a 1km marker and cheered. We were well on our way. Heidi and I saw a little mouse. It was cute. Everything was going nicely until about 2km later.

At the (first) 3km sign, we noticed that the sign said we had 10.5km left to the top. This wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t think that the hike was less than 8km, and we were almost halfway. Unfortunately, our day (night) just got a lot harder. We thought we were making really good time, but realized that if we wanted to get to the peak for sunrise, we would have to push harder uphill.

It’s hard to describe our hours we spent toiling through the dark. They were hard, and we had to take breaks with some regularity. If we stopped for too long though, we’d get cold, so we just had to push through. We barely saw anybody else, save for a few people whizzing by us in cars. The dirt road/path (it was more of a road) was dusty and rocky, so any slip would kick up dust and displace rocks, and cars made it look like Tatooine during a dust storm.

After five and a half brutal hours, going back and forth on thinking we would make it on time or not, we made it to a scenic vista, just below the peak. We all collapsed on to rocks where we could see the sunrise, and waited a few minutes for the sun to peak up and start the day (for the not insane people who don’t wake up at 11:00pm). It was pretty. Maybe that’s understating. I tried to take a picture but to get the full picture, you have to hike for hours and collapse on top of that mountain for yourself. I’d recommend it, as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Once the sun was up, some of us had some snacks, and then we pushed on to the tippy toppy peak which was the official highest point in Panama. You gotta go all the way when you only have about 30 minutes left, right? We got to the top, took some photos, admired the beauty, saw lots of clouds, and then started to think about going down. Before we did though, we stopped again to eat some more and rest a bit. With the sun up, I wasn’t even cold, and I just about fell asleep up there. Unluckily for me, we still had a whole 13.5km down, starting around 8am.

In theory, it should take about half the time to go down as it did to go up. Our ascent took about 5.5 hours, so down should be between 2 and 3 hours. I thought we’d get to the bottom around 11, 12 if we really messed up. We quickly realized that down wasn’t nearly as easy as expected. We all had achy feet, were sleep-deprived, and ready to go home, but the hike wasn’t ready for us to leave. I swear that mountain grew an extra kilometer or two on the way down. We pushed and stopped and saw a white-nosed coati (kinda like a racoon who runs around during the day instead of the night). He charged Heidi when she turned a corner. It was hilarious. I took some selfies with him. We finally got back to the car around 1:30, bringing our descent to 6.5 hours, LONGER than uphill!! How is that even fair?!

Still, we all felt really accomplished at the end. We hiked over 23 miles, blistered our feet, and slept soundly that night. Well, it was still a bit hot, but I was exhausted. We felt even more accomplished after signing in to the ranger logbook, because we saw that a group that started two hours ahead of us only beat us by about half an hour to the peak. So, ultimately, I felt like we’d done a good job, especially considering none of us are in superb shape right now. Nobody died, and we all made it to the top. That’s a win for me.

If anyone is interesting in hiking Volcan Baru, I’d advise you to know that we saw distance markers at 1km, 2km, 3km, 4km, 4.5km (the stretch between 4 and 4.5 is brutal uphill, and feels like a lot more that 0.5km), 6km, 7.5km, 9km, 10km, 11.5km and then a 12.3km right before the top. Budgeting six hours to ascend might have been a bit easier, but five and half isn’t that bad if you don’t mind pushing yourself. The loose rocks make the going slippery sometimes, and the dust gets everywhere and makes you dirty, but that’s more of an annoyance. Well-fitting shoes and early detection and treatment of blisters will make your recovery time quicker, so you can get back to hiking quicker (if you still want to after this one). If you want to see the top but don’t want to hike, you could take a car, but where’s the fun in that?

Until next time,

Fenton

You may have to close your ears…

A Post by Julie. (Enhanced by crew in blue italics- except Lucy who refused to participate)

So, the long overdue Day 2, (delayed due to some legal issues with which we were involved).

Saturday, of our Panama Canal Experience began around 8:00am. We thought we were leaving around noon, so when we saw the advisors showing up, we hurried to get ready for the day. Sadly, we ended up with a whole new crew of advisors. We loved Carlos on Day 1, so we were hoping to see him again today. Our new advisor arrived, (said one word, which we assume is his name) had some breakfast with us, and settled in to his seat in the rear of our cockpit snoozing and looking at his phone. We had about a 5 hour ride through the Gatun Lake, a crocodile infested lake which supplies all of the drinking water to Panama City. There were a few resorts along the banks, but mostly Panama Canal traffic—huge container ships, cruise ships, 2 other yachts and us.

The kids fixed lunch prior to our reaching the 1st lock. Soon after, we were told to get ready to raft up. No problem—should be a lot easier in daylight (or so we thought). However, the middle advisor decided to change the way we rafted up from the night before. Our advisor deferred to him, so we changed our lines all around and finally got rafted up. Now, the midship advisor wanted all of the captains to practice steering with his commands. Unfortunately, the advisor never was able to get the boats all in sync. We went to the right, to the left, right, left (when we were supposed to be going straight)…Instead of waiting for the lock to be ready and figuring out how to control our raft of boats, he directed our raft to tie up on the wall prior to going into the lock ON OUR SIDE. Julie was not very fond of this idea, and let our advisor know, (we think Mom woke him up from his YouTube trance) but to no avail. We ended up docking on the wall very quickly with a bang and a scrape. The advisors were not concerned in the least, (YouTube was still more important) but we took a chunk of fiberglass out of the back of our sugar scoop (which is at the back of our boat). Now, we understood what those big round fenders are for. The actual locking down was quite easy. Unfortunately, the lack of communication between us and the midship advisor did not get any better throughout the rest of the day.

For the second lock, we again rushed up to it before the lock was ready for us. Again, we docked on the wall ON OUR SIDE, and again we scraped and bumped against the wall prior to the lock. (Note: the normal process of locking is to stay in the middle of the chamber, never near a wall.) Again, locking down was easy.

Locks 2 and 3 are connected and as we were already in the middle, we just needed to move directly forward slowly. As we started moving from lock 2 to 3, we ended up going too fast, but the advisor kept telling us to keep going forward. The line handlers on the side of the canal were running to try to keep up with us as we swiftly headed towards the closed front door of the lock. We were going TOO fast—and now we were aiming for the wall ON OUR SIDE – again. Mark yelled to the advisors that we were going too fast, Julie also yelled we were going too fast and we were going to hit—in 10 feet, in 5 feet, and then bang. The advisor once again wasn’t worried about a thing. We scraped the wall going forward with our fenders squishing, sliding up, sliding down, and eventually tearing loose from the boat (with a very loud BANG) and bending our stanchion (the post that holds up our lifelines). Then, the advisor ordered the raft in reverse which sent our back corner fast and furious into the lock wall, causing a pretty big crack in the fiberglass along the waterline. Mom was yelling. She now has Panama Canal words that rival Dad’s engine work, bilge work, and head work words (This statement does not do the linguistic explosion justice. It was quite the spectacle. I (Mark) have never been prouder, Heidi’s ears are still recovering, Lucy is still annoyed by all of this (especially our re-telling, as she thinks we’re not being nice), and Sally is still in shock. Fenton was a bit shocked and began questioning all of his life’s decisions that led him to that point. Along with our advisors, a guy on the lock wall got quite the earful when he tried to tell Julie ‘don’t to worry about it, it’ll be fine’.). Again, locking down went fine…The advisors looked at the damage, shook their heads, and took selfies of themselves with a big cruise ship in the background (funny side note: the clientele of the cruise ship were largely European – and not to reinforce any stereotypes, but, there were a lot of guys in speedos and tighty-whiteys waving at us from their cabin balconies – it was quite the sight). Argh!
On the way out of the 3rd lock, we were greeted with the beautiful Pacific Ocean. We picked up our lost fenders, called our agent, and began the process of filing a formal complaint against the Panama Canal Authority. Our agent was amazing, showed up within a few hours of our incident, and helped prepare us for the process to follow. On Sunday, we had multiple visitors photographing our damage and taking statements. (While everybody was courteous and professional, they all told us we didn’t have a chance of ‘winning’ our case). We went to a court hearing on Monday morning. The process was amazingly efficient, professional, and quick. At the hearing, the advisors definitely showed their inadequacies and we came across well (at one point, the attorney for the Panama Canal Authority had to tell the advisers to stop talking, as they were making fools of themselves). Mark did a great job showing what happened. Our hope was that this group of advisors would not be able to lead another raft down the way we went down—bumping and scraping the whole way. We would find out the results in about a month…

So, it has now been a month. The decision was made. The advisors were at fault for their general incompetence. We were also at fault—not for anything we did or didn’t do, but for being a small boat that needs to be handlined through the Canal (vs the big ships that are pulled through the canal by large locomotives). Every boat like us has to sign a waiver saying that they accept this risk. We are now getting estimates for the work to be done and we will move on. The repair is really not large and we’ve done a temporary fix, but the fact that the advisors really didn’t care about the damage to our boat and didn’t listen to us made us feel the need to make sure something was done. We hope this decision will lead to better advisors for all.

Over the month of February, we had a great visit with family and friends back in the states. While we were originally planning to head west to French Polynesia and New Zealand, we have changed directions and are now heading northwest to Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico. We plan to spend hurricane season in the Sea of Cortez and likely do a camping road trip through the western National Parks in the US and Canada during the hot months. We also will be doing much more research on Galapagos, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. We still plan to go west and will spend some time figuring out what job opportunities await us in New Zealand and the best places to visit with Willie—our Portuguese Water Dog. Dogs are not so easy to bring through the South Pacific.

Now that the Panama Canal chapter is finally closed, we expect to be back up and running with our blog. The kids have lots of stories to tell of new friends, surfing, bioluminescence, and hopefully a hike or two in the not so distant future.

On January 25th, we started our journey through the Panama canal. This was exceptionally exciting for me for two reasons. First, I’d never been through a lock of any kind before, and while the Panama Canal’s locks are about the same size as the rest of my boat mates have through, they’re still really impressive feats of engineering. Secondly, it’s kinda cool to be in places that we read about in history. Sure, in school I learned that thousands of people worked on the canal (and died) and it took immense amounts of manpower to build, but it’s entirely different to be actually there, holding the lines, fighting the wind and current.

As part of our transit procedures, we were assigned an adviser who joined our boat before we rafted up with the other boats and went through the locks. I thought our adviser, Carlos, was hilarious and very helpful, and I’m glad we got to go through the first half with him. I’m even more glad that we kept his accident record at zero, because even though I wanted our transit to be exciting, I’d rather not spend it in the hospital.

Getting ready to go through the locks was about as much of an adventure as going through the locks themselves. We got to the entrance to them around 7pm, so it was already dark out. The canal had lights, but we had to raft up (attach ourselves) to another boat, which had yet another boat on its other side. The rafting difficulty was compounded by the fact that our advisers spoke primarily Spanish, the boat in the middle spoke primarily French, and we spoke primarily English.  After the three of us were all connected, we headed into the first lock.

Since we had a boat on our port (left, facing the bow) side, we only needed to attach lines to side of the canal on our starboard (right, facing the bow) side. This was accomplished pretty simply; workers on the side of the canal threw lines that had a monkey’s fist (a knot that gives a line weight, so it can be thrown) at our boat, we caught them (after a try or two), attached them to our lines, which we held on to, and the worker pulled the line back to the side of the canal. Once they had our lines, they could walk with it alongside the lock until we were at the point where it was attached to the top of the lock. We worked in teams of two to pull in slack as we went up so that the boat farthest from us wouldn’t slam into the opposite wall.

Lucy and I were on the stern, and we had to continually pull the line in and secure it so that we’d stay relatively in the middle of the lock (i.e. not smashing into anything). In the locks, we were fighting the wind as we went up, which made pulling in really difficult. As we went on, we gained more experience and the locks got progressively easier.

The locks were successfully crossed after about two hours, and we had a scenic view of the ocean all the way at the bottom of the ocean. It was really cool seeing the drop off, knowing that we were just down there. I don’t think I’ll ever fully grasp engineering or physics, but I’m really grateful that it works so well.

We spent the night in the man-made Gatun Lake, on a floating plastic mooring thingy that clanked against us all night. Since I had the berth this week, I got a front-row seat to hearing the noise. Sufficient to say, I’m definitely looking forward to sleeping in the Pacific. Willie got to sleep inside last night, not for the noise but rather crocodiles. The lake is a common place for them, and while Willie is fierce, I’m sure he slept better inside.

That was our first day in the canal. Stay tuned for the (very exciting) part two soon!