Well, we hope you all had a great Christmas and we wish everybody the most wonderful New Year.2008 for us was far too exciting for our liking and we are hoping for a quieter life in the year to come, ie no whales, no storms and no equipment failures would be much appreciated. We did enjoyed most of it though and are just very happy and grateful that we are here to look forward to a next year, it could have been very different. In order to transit the Canal we first were required to be measured and generally checked out by a Canal official and upon receiving his paperwork blessing we were then permitted to pay the fees and agree a date for our transit. Just before we were due to go, there was a very bad spell of significant weather which caused landslides and other catastrophies and for us such high winds that we cancelled the trip and opted to go a few days later when things had settled down. OUR CREW FOR THE TRANSIT We picked up our advisor( pilot)and four friends to act as line hand