Right now we’re anchored in the bay near the port of Balboa, Panama. Apparently we can’t get a berth in Balboa, so we’re stuck here at anchor and will have to take the tender boats into port.
The tenders are the lifeboats for the ship. They seat about 60-80 people and the way it works is that there is a platform that comes out from the gangway and hovers over the water. You then climb into the tenders and they ferry you to shore. The thing is that we’re in these super rough swells due to the rather nasty weather we’re experiencing right now. So what happened this morning was that he platform was rising and falling with the swells and crashed into the top of the tender. Somehow this bent something on the platform. So we’ve been stranded on the ship all morning.
The tendering has resumed now, but it’s really dangerous and there’s some concern that if we get into shore, perhaps we won’t get back out to the ship. The platform is very slippery and it’s rocking all over. So this should be quite the adventure today.
We have a trip headed to the Gamboa Rainforest this afternoon. We have to get onto a tender by about 12:45 in order to make it on time to the trip. It’s 11:30 right now and they’re trying to get a normal schedule established for us.
As an extra fun bonus, the area where the tenders take us is really unsafe. So we have to stay in the port building (which is safe) and wait for the shuttles to take us into town.
We got a hotel room for tomorrow night and wonder if we oughtn’t do it for tonight as well, but we’re going to play it by ear for now and see how we do.
2 comments:
Missing you desparately and hope you are safe and well on shore.
Leslie
That's no lifeboat! I preferred my image of the lifeboats from Titanic!
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