Just a short distance from Colon harbor this was a world of difference from Colon. The entrance was a little tricky with a 6 foot deep reef guarding the river entrance we had to travel a "s" shape track into the river. Once inside it was deep and had long stretches with a few bends. It didn't take long before we saw our first family of Howler monkeys in the tree tops. We motored about 3 1/2 miles upstream and anchored at a lovely bend in the river. We could see toucan's and parrots from the boat here. The were 2 other boats with us and one other that was already there. We took a dinghy ride up to the damn and saw a sloth and more howler monkeys along with many birds. We stood under a large tree watching the monkeys for over an hour careful not to be right under them. Our second day on the river we heard that they were going to open the damn gates because of all the rain to lower the Panama Canal's water level. We chose to stay put because no one in charge came and told us we had to leave. We put out lots of scope and stood ready. The current picked up to close to 5 knots we figure. Every ones speed transducers were fouled and we all had to rely on our GPS for our speed, which wouldn't work for this. We had a bit of debris come down the river with a few trees, one getting caught in one boats anchor chain. They were able to get it off without any damage. One the way into the river i looked down to our rudder cap to see one side of it had fallen off. Once anchored i discovered that electrolysis had eaten away the cap where it did not have much metal left to it. I used some nylon blocks, screw clamps and fiberglass cloth and resin to reinforce it until i could find a replacement. This was one of the highlights of our trip for sure.
13NM motored
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