Arriving at the Flats in the most torrential rain, we waited 7 hours for our adviser to arrive, watching as the 6 other yachts received their advisers and headed off towards the locks. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that no one was going to turn up but Ronaldo, our linehandler kept saying “no, he'll come.” And so he did at 9.30pm. As we were the last boat standing, we were to go through the lock by ourselves, so no rafting up and all linehandlers needed. Mia and Lochy stayed awake for the whole process, being the chief photographers. Mark and I privately kept our fingers crossed that our starboard engine that chooses when it goes into gear would actually go into gear and not misbehave. Going through the locks was just an amazing experience. I think Whit and I felt a little bit nervous that one of us would be the weak link, however, we received the monkey fists they lob down onto the boat and tied a bowline and then once we realised we only had to do that once, we relaxed a little, bringing in the slack as the water rose, giving slack as the men on shore walked us to the next lock. By 11.30pm we were rafted up to a buoy in Gatun lake and saying cheerio to Rick, our excellent adviser.