Sunday, April 9 2006
Anchored position: 08′ 32 N 083′ 17 W
Weather: Overcast, hot and humid
News:
Timoneer is back at sea again after transiting the Panama Canal into the
Pacific ocean. We departed the Flemenco Marina at 1000 Saturday morning
for the 400 mile trip to Costa Rica, winding our way though the moored ships
and out to the sea buoy in the flat calm sea and no wind. The anchorage
off the Pacific side of the Panama Canal looks like a city as there is a
least a weeks waiting time for big ships as this is their busiest time of
the year.
This is my first trip with the new chart plotter software and
I am very impressed by the AIS (Automatic Identification System) displayed
targets on the chart plotter display. It neatly displayed all the AIS
equipped ships in the anchorage and underway as far out as 60 miles. The
first leg was more southerly than you would expect as we have to clear the
Punta Mala headland before turning more North and West.
We put out the fishing lines hoping to land some fish for dinner, we caught a small
Skipjack tuna at 1600 and then two big eye tunas as the sun set.
According to the cruising guides it is still the dry season for another
month but boy did we have some rain and lightening all through the night.
The lightening was quite spectacular lighting up the mountainous coastline.
It continued to rain most of the morning as we approached Gulf Dulce, Costa
Rica and our destination of the anchorage at Puerto Jimenez. I put the
fishing lines out between rain showers and we caught another 3 Big eye tunas
which were cleaned and promptly vacuum packed and put in the freezer by Penny.
We changed up to some big sized lures to see if we could catch some billfish
which we will take some pictures of and release.
Timoneer arrived in the anchorage at Puerto Jimenez at 1623 Sunday evening averaging over twelve
knots for the trip. Everyone on board is well.
John
