Our Panama Canal transit has now been confirmed for Sunday afternoon (about 8am Monday Sydney time). Our friends on Ganga are going on Saturday and Båten Anna on Monday. There are so many Australian boats waiting here in Shelter Bay you could happily rename the canal the Aussie Canal! The night before last we joined another Aussie boat as line handlers for their transit. All up it's simple enough but we're really glad we did it as there's a number of tricks we learnt that will help with our own transit. Until Sunday though we've only a limited number of jobs and are enjoying the pool here at Shelter Bay Marina and $1 beers during happy hour!

Here's a little about the canal transit as it's quite a process,

We have an agent, Eric, who helps with the mass of paper work, fees, bonds, legwork between various offices, arrange inspections, hiring of extra lines, fenders and the like, after watching Båten Anna go solo we can safely say it's money well spent. All in our transit is costing us just under $1000, less than we anticipated.

During the Transit we'll have an advisor onboard provided by the Panama Canal Authority and we're required to have four line handlers onboard plus the skipper! I'm going to skipper, Mike will act as one of the line handlers and then our friends from Båten Anna (Elliv, Emillie and Gustaf) will be the other three. We'll do the same for them on Monday (making three transits in total!). For the little boats (we're little compared to the cargo ships!) they raft us up while in the locks, normally a raft of three boats they place you either in front or behind a medium sized cargo ship. The line handlers then control lines from each corner of the raft upto the lock walls. The big ships use locomotives and big cables to move them through, this is why little boats are known by the canal authority as hand liners.

The transits are a little different from normal in that we will transit the entire canal in one afternoon/evening. Apparently it's a bit of a shame because yachts used to overnight in Gutan Lake which is pretty and filled with wildlife. Now it's night for most of the transit and to top if off we have to arrive into an anchorage around 2am and hope to find a safe spot.

The simplified, transit is as follows;
1. Anchor outside the canal and await our advisor to be dropped off by a pilot boat.
2. Raft up with other small boats
3. Enter the Gatun Locks (three sequential up locks)
4. Exit locks and unraft
5. Motor across Gatun Lake (about 21 nautical miles)
6. Raft up with other small boats
7. Enter Miraflores Locks (one down lock followed by another two down locks)
8. Advisor is collected by a pilot boat.
9. Exit locks and motor to anchorage at Isla Flamenco (about 6 miles)

The canal itself is an absolutely massive construction and it's all being widened over the next few years costing nearly a billion dollars. Our transit on Wednesday night was a little boys dream with the largest super sized trucks and cranes and diggers we'd ever seen. Watching the last gate open into the Pacific (photo above) is filled with anticipation but in rather a let down you're only greeted by more muddy water that looks just like the muddy water at the other end :)