We have been assigned a date for our Canal transit - the 18th April. There's quite a backlog after the Easter holiday and so the delay is longer than we'd hoped for. Still, there's lots to do on the boat - we're working through a list of maintenance jobs - and we're organising our shopping lists for food for the Pacific crossing.
The Panama Canal transit takes 2 days for yachts - we'll leave the marina on the afternoon of the 18th, our Canal Advisor will come aboard and guide us through the Gatun locks and into the Gatun Lake where he'll leave us for the night. The following morning the Advisor guides us through the canal, down the Miraflores locks and into the Pacific. We'll be rafted alongside a couple of other yachts for the locks, with long lines from the outer boats of the raft to the line handlers on the lock walls so we have to have 4 dedicated line-handlers aboard. Yachts help each other out with this so we are going through the canal on the 11th as line-handlers on a French yacht (it'll be good experience for us) and we'll hope to find people to do the same for us on our transit.
Meanwhile we're going to take the bus to Panama City to see the sights as a break between the boat jobs so we'll post some photos soon.
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