Launched In Shelter Bay Marina On 28.02.2014.

Finally and after 33 days of hard work were we launched this morning. I believe these photos shows New Dawn nicely shining and new anti fouling, as well as the Teak Decks looks almost like new. There are still some work to be done and I am told that there is a waiting time for the Canal Transit, which might take me another two weeks, before we can get through.

It took four workers ten days to sand the Teak Decks.

We met a French/Swiss couple in Bonaire and sailed parallel with their Cat "ONIVA" a few times. They arrived the other day in Shelter Bay Marina and their young boy is very charming with his blond curly heir. Here he has a pee in the Marina.

The Work Is Progressing, Although I would Have Preferred It To Be Quicker.....

 The new water intake, which I hope will (can) solve the water maker problem(?).

 The polishing under way.

 Anti Fouling underway today. Should be finished tomorrow Thursday.

One of the new toys, a Mercury 20 HP, four stroke, arrived Tuesday from Miami.

The Teak Decks are now looking new again and is wonderful to walk on as it is nice smooth.

My First Panama Canal Transit On S/Y Bandit.

It is always exiting to transit the Panama Canal for the first time, but not only is it expensive (USD 2.300 for me), cumbersome, loads of paperwork, loads of rules and silly regulations and most of yacht owners like to have a go with another boat as line handler. I offered my line handling to friends we have met in 2007 in Greece and last Thursday 20 February we sailed out toe the agreed anchorage "the Flats" and received our pilot very late at almost 18:00 instead of 13:00 and the fun started.

 Our pilot for the evening arrive. These pilots are a strange bunch of people, most are arrogant and spoiled people and don't really know what they are doing, except to give silly and contradicting orders. This one was very lazy and the other that evening was a real "Hitler type" and I had to tell him a few things of how to behave, before he, in the end, became acceptable and even polite to me.

Skipper David at the helm. We shared that duty all day, as he seemed to have confident in me.

 On our way to the first Lock. Plenty of shipping and going close by.

 These are a few of the gates to be installed in the Canal's expansion program; they are huge.

 We had to get into the lock close after the white cargo ship.

 Here we are rafted together with Israeli and US Cat.

 Very impressive power of the tugs in the Canal.

 Entering the lock. No more photos from this, as we were busy.

Arriving at the first stop after the three locks and now in the Gutan Lake for the night. We had to attach the boat to this round fortunately soft buoy

The next day started with another lazy pilot arriving at 07:30  and off we went for the four hours motoring across the Lake.

 An impressive sight when this car carrying Ro-Ro ship approach us close up during the last three locks descending into the Pacific.

A Swiss Arriving Shelter Bay Marina Sailing Single Handed Around The World.

 Here Yvan Bourgnon arrive from Martinique on his Hoby Cat.

 The welcoming committee consisted of Roland, his wife and yours truly.

 He sleeps on one of the side bunks depending on the healing of the boat.

 Yvan is a 44 years old Swiss and I found him in a particular good state on arrival after 6 days fast sailing from Martinique.

 His mother ship is the blue X-Yacht on the right of this photo. They arrived 12 hours after Yvan and had broken the boom in the rough seas off Columbia during an accidental Gybe. They had stayed much further out at sea than we did when we sailed there and I still believe our tactic was better.

In the evening we dined at Roland's yacht with Yvan, who turned out to be a very nice chap and that had lived many of his childhood years on his parents yacht.

More Work In Shelter Bay Marina

 The sanding of the Teak decks has started and today they were four chaps sanding and I hope they will continue using at least four people, as otherwise we will never be finished.

 Dust everywhere and I have had to close the boat and have no ventilation, so it is extremely hot inside the boat.

The preparation of the bottom is done and I did most of the work on the Gori Propeller yesterday. So we are progressing.

Working At Shelter Bay Marina.

 Here we are cutting the excess Deck Chalking, before we will sand the Teak Decks. A huge job.

 These two chaps did the dirty job of sanding the AF. They have now worked a week and not yet finished. I did that job in Port Napoleon in July and suffered a lot.

New Dawn protecting the surrounding. But we have dust everywhere.