Date First Posted: February 20, 2006
Log Entry Start Date - February 16, 2006
Log Entry End Date - February 20, 2006
Locations Covered - Panama Canal and Panama City, Panama
Present Location: Flamenco Yacht Club, Fuerte Amador Resort
Latitude: 8 54.8 N Longitude: 79 31.3 W
Weather: Partly cloudy and hot (this side of the canal is usually dry)
Distance covered since last entry: 50 nautical miles
Total distance traveled since departure from Antigua: 1194 nautical miles
Commentary:
We’ve finally made it through the
Canal. At 2:30AM on the 16th of February, we got up and prepared
for the arrival of our Canal advisor. For larger boats and ships, one or
more pilots are onboard during their transit, for smaller boats, advisors
are used. They don’t have quite the same qualifications, but still may have
years of experience.
Our advisor, Francisco, arrived just before 4 AM, and was one of the most senior advisors for the eight sailboats going through the canal that day, with over 15 years of experience. This picture of Francisco was taken later in the day as we motored through Gatun Lake.
After
the pilot boat had dropped off all the advisors, we headed for the entrance
to the Canal. As one of the larger boats in the group, we became the center
boat in the first group of three boats that was rafted together just before
entering the first lock. The second group of three boats had Anthem in the
center, and the last group was a large catamaran and a second sailboat. All
eight boats are locked through as a group without any other ship in the same
lock. Each lock has two channels, allowing boats to go in both directions
or in pairs in the same direction. There was a little bit of excitement as
we were finishing getting the third boat tied up to us as a large ship
passed only 20 or 30 feet away going up the adjacent lock. At that time in
the morning and in nearly total darkness, coordinating three boats tying up
while underway is difficult, especially when some of the crew members on the
boats are guests who don’t have a lot of experience, or even hired line
handlers that are onboard only for the day. Everyone needs to have 4 people
on board in addition to the captain and advisor, so they can handle the
lines as we tie up together and going through the locks. Many boats don’t
have that many, so they get friends on other boats to help, or pay for
locals to help.
We
actually started into the first of the three locks at the Gatun Locks,
around 4:45 AM and left the third lock just as it was getting light, around
6:30 AM. The picture at left shows the second raft of three boats following
behind us into the first lock.
The picture below is as we're getting ready to leave the third Gatun lock with a freighter carrying cars alongside of us.
The
canal consists of the Gatun locks that lift boats up 85 feet to Gatun Lake,
which is a large dammed lake in the middle of the isthmus, followed by the
Pedro Miguel lock and two Miraflores locks that lower boats back down the 85
feet to the Pacific. The Atlantic and Pacific are nominally the same level
except for the effects of tides, which on the Pacific side can be up to 20
feet high. The actual process of being locked through consists of getting
positioned in the lock and having
Canal
workers on the sides of the locks throw messenger lines to the outside boats
in the raft, to which are connected four 1" diameter 150 foot lines that are
taken back to bollards (big posts) on the top of the lock. When all
the rafts are ready, they close the lock doors behind us and the locks begin
to fill with water and the boats start lifting up. There is a lot of
turbulence as millions of gallons of water rush in, and the line handlers on
the boats are required to constantly take in their lines and keep them
tensioned so that the rafted boats stay in the center of the lock. If
everyone isn't paying attention, the raft of boats can get turned sideways
or get pushed into the side of the lock.
Once
we're at the same level as the water in the next lock, the forward lock door
open, and we slowly motor as a group forward to the end of the next lock.
The process is repeated for the first three locks, after which the boats
unraft and motor to the locks for going down, where we raft up again.
Going down is a bit easier as there isn't much turbulence as the water is
drained. Filling or draining a lock takes about 10-20 minutes.
As the center boat in our raft, our advisor has the responsibility for our
group of boats, and we provide most of the propulsion for maneuvering and
moving the group through the locks. This picture shows a raft of boats
going through the final locks later in the day.
The
trip through Gatun Lake is about 14 miles, a flooded hilly region with
dozens of small islands, and basically uninhabited. We saw parrots, but
didn’t see the monkeys that are sometimes visible. The Smithsonian
Institute has many facilities in Panama doing research including a station
on Gatun Lake that is accessible only by boat. The area is very beautiful,
and starting through it at sunrise was very memorable.
While ships need to stay in the main channels, we were able to go through Banana Cut, a more picturesque path through the lake.
In the middle of the lake is an anchorage for ships waiting to complete their transit. Because the passage from Gatun Lake to the Pacific side is very narrow, most ships can only pass in one direction. As a result, ships start into the canal from both directions, stop in Gatun Lake for all the ships in the other direction to arrive, and then continue to the other side. Our flotilla of eight sailboats was able to pass ships going in the opposite direction. By 9 AM we passed the town of Gamboa at the end of Gatun Lake and started down Galliard Cut. Gamboa is where the entire Canal’s dredging and maintenance operations are headquartered. It is a full time effort to keep the Canal deep and wide enough, and it appears that in Galliard Cut, they are trying to widen it to make maneuvering easier for the largest ships.
Building
the locks was a major engineering feat, however, digging out Galliard Cut
was a massive undertaking. This stretch of the Canal passes through the
mountain range that runs down Panama, and although this may have been the
lowest region, to build the canal they had to cut a valley through a region
that was up to 500 feet high, ½ mile wide, and over 7 miles long.
Contractors
Hill was perhaps the most challenging area where the land is cut back in
terraces. Given the use of largely manual labor, animals for transport,
jungle heat, and malaria, building and completing the Canal in 1913 is
amazing.
We made good time motoring from the Gatun Locks to the Pedro Miguel lock, while at the same time; our scheduled passage through this lock was delayed by other boats coming in the other direction. We tied up to wharf just before a brand new bridge over the canal. We didn’t remember seeing this bridge before, and were told it was only a year old.
We
reached the second of the Miraflores locks around 1PM, and Jennifer started
calling her friends and our son to see if we were visible on the Canal
webcam. They told us that they could see us, which was exciting. In the
picture at right, we are passing through the gates between the two locks,
and looking up toward the webcam.
After the final lock, we passed under the Bridge of the Americas, part of the Pan-American Highway, and then stopped at the Balboa Yacht Club to refill our fuel tanks.
The
Balboa Yacht Club’s building burned down several years ago, and has yet to
be rebuilt (and may never be), but they still maintain a fuel dock and
moorings. All of the moorings were full, with perhaps a hundred boats.
Many would have been cruisers that had recently passed through the Canal and
were getting provisions prior to continuing through the Pacific. Our agent,
Stanley, was waiting at the gas dock to give Harry and Hilary back their
passports which had been stamped incorrectly back in Colon, and to collect
the long lines he had provided us.
After taking on fuel, we continued out the channel until we could turn left and head for downtown Panama City and the Miramar Inter-continental Hotel.
In contrast to Colon, whose buildings look very old and dilapidated, without any buildings over five floors that we saw, Panama City is a modern city of 1-1/2 million people and a skyline full of skyscrapers.
Frankly it makes our home town of
Detroit look a bit small and old. There are poorer sections, and except in
the downtown area and certain other sections, the crime rate can be bad.
We
had a hard time picking out the Miramar against the background of
buildings. We remembered it as being twin towers that were pretty tall, but
since we were here in 1997, there must have been dozens of new complexes
built. The Miramar marina isn’t on any charts, so we looked up the photo we
had on our old website to recall what the Miramar looked like in order to
find our way.
Sure enough, the Miramar towers were still about the highest in the city, and the marina wasn’t very full. However, over the years, the marina had a lot of silt fill in where it had been dredged, and at about half tide (7-8 feet above low tide), we were passing areas with only 7-8 foot depths, obviously mud flats at low tide. In the marina itself, the depths were only 10 feet, which meant at low tide we’d only have two feet of water, while our boat requires 6 feet. Apparently the marina didn’t understand that we were a sailboat and that we couldn’t stay in those conditions. We had to turn around and head back out of the bay before the tide went down and find another spot to stay.
After
a lot of phone and radio calls to the only other marina in the area
(Flamenco) we were able to negotiate a mooring to stay at. The Flamenco
marina is part of a very large, new and upscale resort on an island
connected by a causeway to Panama City.
Not only was it full of local yachts (lots of big fishing yachts), it had agreed to let the Blue Water Rally stay at their newest and not quite finished docks. We were actually happy to be on the mooring, with a bit more breeze, and a cost of $0.50/ft per day, versus $2.50/ft per day at the docks.
Without
a doubt, this will be the most modern and upscale marina/resort that we will
see until we get to New Zealand or Australia. As seen below, the docks
all float up and down on tall posts in order to accommodate tides up to 20
feet. This makes climbing up to street level a challenge at low tide.
The next day after we arrived, our friends Harry and Hilary went into the city to arrange their air travel back home while we cleaned up the boat. After a lot of time at travel agents and on the Internet, they made a good connection and then went to the Miramar for a late afternoon refreshment. To their horror, they had either lost or had their bag stolen that had not only their new airline tickets but also their connecting tickets. Luckily they had their cash, credit cards, and passports in a different bag, but they spent hours with the police that day trying to file their report. They said they were surprised by how friendly and helpful everyone was, but frustrated by the amount of time that it took. They spent the entire next day getting their new tickets replaced, and visiting three different police departments (local, tourist, and national), before they could get a written report to carry with them if they needed it to get their other tickets replaced when they arrive in Barbados to make their connection back to Scotland.
We spent Saturday shopping for a new computer, boat supplies and lots of items on Nancy’s list. They have an electronics store similar to Circuit City or Compusa with a great selection of computers at prices similar to home. Our only problem was that the keyboards are all designed for Panamanian Spanish, and they had to load an English version of Windows XP before we could take delivery. When we went to pick up the new computer, they had loaded a Spanish version of XP by mistake, and couldn’t change it back to English, so they had to start over on another new computer. But they didn’t have any more of the same model, and it took another hour or more before they arranged to find another model, upgrade it to the version we wanted and reload XP, and then set the keyboard to the Panamanian style in spite of the English XP.
We are now pretty ready to start off for the Perlas Islands and Ecuador. Our friends on Anthem have gone ahead and hopefully will wait for us in the Perlas. The last thing to do is trying out the Wi-Fi connection here in the harbor and trying to update the website. With all of the rally boats here, they were out of the pre-paid Wi-Fi cards until yesterday, and we’ve been warned the connections are not great.
We should be able to get back online when we arrive in La Libertad (Puerto Lucia Yacht Club) in Ecuador, which will be in about a week, assuming a day or two in the Perlas and 5 or 6 days enroute.
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This site was last updated 02/19/06