Return to the Pacific

Four years after leaving Seattle, two trips up the US East Coast getting as far north as Cape Breton in the Canadian Maritimes and as far south as Cartagena, Colombia in South America, visiting major U.S. cities like Boston, New York and Washington DC. After traveling 20,000 nautical miles, visiting something close to 19 countries (depending on how you count a country), each of us losing a parent and getting our daughter married off, we are back in the Pacific.
When we left Seattle we were on our way to the South Pacific. We are now 600 miles further away from New Zealand than when we started out. Our passages are marked in white in the Google Earth view above.
Our Canal transit back to the Pacific went well. All four of our fantastic line handlers came back with all their hands and feet – and with some great memories of seeing one of the man-made wonders of the world from the working side. This was my 8th Canal Transit and I still am amazed and enthralled with the 100 year old engineering. Equally amazing is the scope of the massive engineering project underway now to build bigger locks for the canal.
We will spend about a week here in La Playita (the anchorage near Panama City) stocking up for the South Pacific. The SP doesn’t offer much in the way of supplies and they are expensive. So the more we carry, the cheaper it will be. Then we’ll head off to Las Perlas (The Pearls) islands, just off the coast from Panama City, to clean the bottom and await a weather window for our sail to the Galapagos.
Paul