Position 09:33.529N 79:39.986W

Friday, we left the San Blas and sailed 60 miles to anchor in Portobello ready for our Panama briefing the following day when all the rally boats got together for lunch.

The restaurants are very scarce here and the only form of cooking seems to be the deep fat fryer – chicken or unidentified fish with various breeds of plantains.

Rice comes with everything and escapes the deep fat fryer, I suspect only because of the mess it would make.

We are going through the canal on Wednesday and Thursday – so be sure to watch the web cams and we will give you all a wave.

John & Sue and Mark are crewing for other yachts transiting tomorrow, staying overnight with them and then returning to Blue Magic by minibus ready for our transit on Wednesday.

I am staying to look after our boat and hopefully get some provisioning and washing done.

The trip to the supermarket involves a secure taxi ride as Colon city is very unsafe so a few of us girls are planning to go together along with our AK47 or baseball bat as it is usually called !

We haven’t seen a supermarket for over three weeks and I am getting a bit bored with playing ‘Ready Steady Cook’ , where you are given 5 random ingredients and have to come up with a delicious 3 course meal in twenty minutes using those ingredients.  

John is in his element here, identifying all the cruise and cargo ships, from his days at Dover Harbour Board. We have decided he is the boat version of a train spotter !!

Rally control seem to be having a nightmare co coordinating the transit and at present we are still short of our 5^th crew member – so fingers crossed it all slots into place.

I think we need an experienced systems analyst to sort out the programme which continues over 7 days and will see 30 boats in total going through the canal.

The whole operation involves ‘borrowing’ crew from boats already through or waiting to go through so that they can make up the necessary 5 crew for each of the boats actually transiting.

The transit takes two days and crew need to be on board the day before they are due to transit.

It sounds like a GCSE question and if only my brain would engage I am sure there is a perfectly sensible solution ?