Waiting for our pilot… We are currently sitting on a mooring near the Gatun locks. We transited the first three locks of the Panama Canal yesterday afternoon. All went very smoothly. We were rafted alongside a boat named Swan Song, whose crew we knew from our time in Shelter Bay. They had arrived at about the same time that we did after a rough passage along the coast of Venezuela, and are heading to the Whitsunday Islands in Australia. We will raft alongside them again this afternoon as we step down a couple of more locks to the Pacific Ocean. Our lock transit is scheduled for this afternoon, with an ending time of 1556, but our pilot was supposed to arrive at 0730 this morning, so I am already anticipating that we will be going through the locks later than planned. When we are in the Miraflores locks there is a webcam where we can be seen live. I don’t have the web address, but I am sure that a quick Google search would find it. I will try to update again when I know what time we are going through for sure. At least this is a nice place to have to wait. We are on a beautiful lake surrounded by tropical rainforest. The sun is out and the birds and ship traffic provide something interesting to watch.
