Panama Canal Transit

Note: If you want to look at these pics on the blog more closely you can double click and it will take you to the larger versions. i couldn't do justice with my poopy Ipad but it is better than nothing.

After you have gone through all the bureaucracy, paid your fees, rented your lines and fenders and been given your date and time of transit you wait.....................................................and wait until the day

you are told to go to a place called the "Flats" to wait some more for your adviser to come on board. He climbs on and stays by the helm to tell the captain what to do while the rest of us wait for our instructions.

Finally we can go...but it was pouring rain

Our adviser was cool as a cucumber while he instructed us to motor up to the locks in the torrential downpour and wait for the other boats to join us. We all looked soaked but he never even looked wet.That smaller guy in the background is the adviser for the boat that was on our port side.

He had us raft up with two monohulls.

 Then proceed into the locks. There are three on each side of Gatun Lake.

See those guys in orange...they are the Port Authorities line handlers and they throw you a monkey fist to tie off on your rented line that they then drag back to them and use to walk with you into position.

Once inside and all tied off the gate starts to close

When the gate is all closed the water

starts to bubble and whirlpool and churn  in and you raise up. The captain and the outside four line handlers do the bulk of the work, keeping the three boats straight, not hitting the walls, and not tearing the cleats off the boats.

Going up is a trip.

We were heading up to 72' in this one but were only in the 40's

We finished the first locks in the evening and were instructed to separate the boats and motor to very large buoys in

Lake Gatun to spend the night.We had our first fresh water swim of the trip but didn't venture too far from the boat as we had already seen a very large crocodile.

Then next morning a new adviser was delivered at 6:00am. He waited until we were awake and then instructed us to start motoring across Lake Gatun

which would turn out to be a four hour long journey.

 We passed

 some

great scenery

with good birding

 but we had to stay in our lane at all times

 buoys marked our way

The Photographer

 but we ate and chatted and noticed

 bright red dragonflies on our lines.

When we neared the next set of locks we offloaded our professional photographer(my friend) onto this boat so he could take pics of us looking back. They had been transiting alone just ahead of us and agreed to take him on. He had loads of pics of their boat too.

 We rafted

 back up

with our now buddies and their new advisers

checked the fenders

and headed off. This time we were going down, down, down to the Pacific.

 They closed the gates behind us. Can't see them this time except that people are walking across behind us.

 the line handlers watched us go down

 i thought these Virgin Mary type rope holders that were never used by the canal workers were really cool.

 We dropped down and the touristas dem watched the whole show from the balcony above at the Miraflores museum above the locks.

 My friend

 got some

great shots of us from in front.

The gates opened and we greeted the Pacific side.

Got dropped off at the marina

and took the bus back to my friends...the end of a great sailing trip...a great adventure...and a chance to reconnect with people i hadn't seen in a very long time. Plus a bonus visit with someone who added a dimension i never expected to the whole experience.

See ya Wednesday!