Isla Flamenco, 20th March

At 7.10am a pilot boat made its way towards the 6 boats (us, Vagabond Heart, Christine Anne, Sunchaser, a French X40 and a Panama catamaran) moored to the buoy in the Gatun Lake. An advisor got on every boat except ours??!! According to Sunchasers advisor ours was delayed but would arrive soon so they all headed off across the lake and we were left on the buoy!
At 8am Jonny rang the scheduler to try and find out what time our advisor would arrive. Apparently he was on his way ... at 8.10am he arrived and we were on our way.
He then told us that we had to be at the first lock by 11.20am - 28 miles in 3 hours - a 9 knot average speed!! He told us to go as fast as we cold without damaging the engine so we pushed the engine so we were doing 6.5 knots and pulled the genoa out to push us up to 7 knots. It was not looking like we were going to make it when we heard that our lock had been delayed by half an hour so we had to be there by 11.50am.
As we made our way through the lake we found out the reason the advisor was delayed ... he had overslept and then despite already being late he had to stop for cigarettes which he proceeded to smoke on Newt without asking whether it was ok.
As we approached the other yachts just before the locks we were expecting them to be rafted the same as the night before so we would be on Vagabonds port side to allow for our prop kick in reverse but they were rafted differently and we would have been on Sunchasers starboard side.
The advisor knew the captain of the tourist boat going through the locks with us so arranged for us to go alongside them instead. This meant we had an easy ride down - just tied up to the tourist boat and they did the work. We also provided an extra attraction for the tourists!
As we approached the Miraflores lock with the webcam we asked the advisor to ask for the webcam to point at us so we hope you could see us - we did wave!
Through the other side we dropped our line handlers - Andy, his mum, Don (from Redwood Coast) and Lizzie (an english GAP year student doing some sailing on an South African boat), tyres and lines at the Balboa Yacht CLub and then headed round to the anchorage at Isla Flamenco.
After putting the boat back together, having showers we are off to Vagabond Heart for celebration drinks :)