The night before our date to transit the canal, Dave & Cheryl moved on board Four Points. We were all excited for transit of the canal. A once in a lifetime adventure that we all could share! We are so happy that Dave and Cheryl decided to join us and help us as line handlers for the transit. It is amazing that the time has come to make the crossing to the Atlantic after months, well, really years of talking and planning our sailing trip. This is another major milestone of our sailing adventure!
We all woke early and had a light breakfast while we waited for our Advisor and fourth line handler (a local Panamanian that we hired to help us and hopefully teach us the "ropes" so to speak since he was the only one that had experience transiting the canal)
We were fortunate that Tony of "Tony's Taxi Co." not only rented us lines but also got us in contact with Francisco, our fourth line handler. Francisco promptly met us at Four Points at 7:30 am to prepare for our transit. This was quite interesting because Tony told us that Francisco could speak English but we found out he spoke as much English as we did Spanish. The funny part is that I was the one that could speak the most Spanish to communicate with Francisco. This definitely made it interesting especially with my Spanish! Ha!
We waited around for a while for our advisor and were getting nervous as time got closer to our transit time and we did not have an advisor on board. Brian called Flemenco Signal to see if we were still on the Panama Canal Transit and we were relieved that we were on the list. About that time, our Advisor contacted us on the VHF to say that he was on the ACP ferryboat that was approaching buoy 16 and that we were to come out to meet him. Since we were waiting on a mooring right next to buoy 16 it took us very little time to get to the Advisor. We saw s/v Java Moon, another sailboat that we knew from Golfito, Costa Rico was also schedule to make the canal transit the same time we were scheduled. We followed our first advisor's, George, (we ended up having two, another one, Ricky, on the second day), instructions to motor up to the entrance of the first locks and wait. He informed us that our time had been changed because we could not go in the locks with a ship that was carrying dangerous cargo. We had to wait until the next ship that was carrying freight. We were glad to find out that the next ship coming up behind us was the ship that we were going to transit the canal. This delayed our entry to the first locks by a couple of hours...sorry for those of you that we mentioned via email that we were going through around 9:00 am to view our transit via video cam. We rafted (side tide to) s/v Java Moon and moved as one into the Miraflores Locks just behind a very large freight ship! Being rafted next to Java Moon meant that we only needed to use 2 line handlers, in this case on the starboard side. Francisco took the bow and Dave & Cheryl worked as a team on the stern. Brian was at the helm working with Skip (the captain of Java Moon), making sure that both sailboats stayed in the center of the locks until the four lines were secure to the wall. Since I was still not feeling the greatest b/c my cold developed into laryngitis, my job was to make sure everyone had food and water when needed and take photos!
On the Pacific side there are 2 sets of locks, Miraflores & Pedro Miguel Locks and on the Atlantic side there is Gatun Locks. Between the Miraflores locks and Pedro locks there is the man-made Miraflores Lake. The first two sets of locks for us heading north, are up-locking, which means that 52 million gallons of fresh water (now that's a lot of water!) enter and gushes up from the holes of the chamber floor, allowing the boats to step up to approximately 54' in the Miraflores locks and 31' in Pedro Miguel Locks. This is where the line handlers have to constantly stay on guard (all 4 should work in unison) and haul in the slacking line so the boat(s) (Four Points & Java Moon) do not drift or twist out of center of chamber, thus keeping them from hitting the cement wall. Cement wall is not good for fiberglass boat! Our line handlers (Francisco on the bow, Dave & Cheryl on the stern) did an excellent job! Thanks for your help!
After passing through the second set of locks on the Pacific side, we untied our lines from s/v Java Moon then had to motor across the Gatun Lake for 28 miles beating against the wind. One area you will see in the pictures the muddy lake with wind swells. The lake is constantly being dredged as well as work being done on it for the Canal expansion. The Gatun Lake is a huge man-made lake that covers approximately 117 square nautical miles. Because we were delayed in the morning, by the time we got to the other side of the lake and opening of the Gatun Locks it was already determined that Four Points & Java Moon would have to spend the night in the Gatun Lake on a mooring buoy. Since we were not schedule to transit Gatun Locks until midday the next day, a few of us the next morning took a refreshing swim in the fresh water! Because Gatun Lake is known to have crocodiles, we stayed close to the boat. And just hoped that we would not become a crocodile appetizer! Since David and Francisco decided to not to partake in the fresh water bath, we had them be on crocodile (or cocodrilo) watch. Not sure what we do if they saw one but it made us feel better anyway.
Shortly after noon, we saw that our advisor (Ricky) was been dropped off to our boat. We quickly prepared and headed to the last set of locks. We rafted up with s/v Java Moon again, just outside the opening of Gatun Locks. We were scheduled to be in front of a large freight ship full of cars. Wow! That is a huge ship...it makes Four Points look like a toy! While it was moving rather quickly towards the opening, we had to move in front of it as fast as we could. Yikes! It really looked close...like we were not going to make it. We have pictures of it creeping up behind us as we enter the lock chamber. Brian did not want to look so I took as many pictures of it, including one of him with his worried look!
We were all excited to continue our journey through the Panama Canal. What an amazing experience! In the Gatun Locks we were going to descend approximately 84' to the Atlantic side or down to the Caribbean Sea. It was amazing because there was a cruise ship that was just ahead and below us. This is known as down-locking. Down-locking is much easier than up-locking because there is less turbulence as the 52 gallons of water is let out and there is no prop wash from the large ships. It is also easier for the line handlers to gradually let out line as we go down. Not sure if you will be able to see the cruise ship in the lower chamber in the pictures.
After completing the last locks we were only 5 miles from Shelter Bay Marina. The ACP ferryboat came by to pick up our Advisor, Ricky and then we headed across the Canal Zone to the marina. We were glad to have finished this milestone of our trip! We cleaned up Four Points from having all the tires hang on her for protection from the cement walls. We were able to get a new hose for the engine, provision, refuel and fill water to prepare for our passage to San Blas Islands.