A short video of our practice run through the Canal

This video starts in the tranquil Gatun Lake and finishes in the Pacific

Our practice run through the Panama Canal

On Thursday and Friday we went through the canal as line-handlers on the French yacht Gadjo Dilo and really enjoyed the experience. It was pretty much as we'd expected though we were still taken aback by the scale of the locks and surprised by the tranquil beauty of the Gatun Lake. 

There were just three yachts transiting, ourselves (40ft), a 46ft catamaran and a tiny, 19ft yacht with two, patently potty, Frenchmen who intend to circumnavigate the globe in it. Of course, for the Canal they had to have the full complement on 4 line handlers plus skipper and Canal Advisor so the boat looked pretty overloaded!

This was certainly one of the smallest boats to transit the canal and, by contrast, we met one of the biggest at the end of the passage. 

This is known as a Panamax and is built to fit exactly into the locks with just a foot or so to spare at each side - the new locks being built (to open in 2015, they hope) will allow even bigger ships to make the passage.

Here are a few more photos of the trip:

Finally, there are live webcams on the Gatun and Miraflores locks which you can access via this link: http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html Click on the Hi-res version and there's a button under the picture that adds a perma-link to the camera so it updates the picture very minute or so.

We will go through the Gatun lock at about 16.00 local time on Monday 15th (so about 22.00 BST) and the Miraflores lock at about 12.00 on Tuesday (18.00 local time), all +/- half an hour or so.

After Graham completed a mammoth, 3-trolley, $440 pre-Pacific shop in a Colon supermarket yesterday, today we'll finish showing all the tins and get the boat ready for the off. Unfortunately one of our line handlers has just told us he can't come (he's been offered a crew position on another yacht) so we'll have to chase round for someone else today which is a pain. 

A new date for the Canal and some details

We are going gently mad in the heat here at Shelter Bay Marina, not helped by the ludicrous bureaucracy. In spite of clearing into Panamanian waters in Porvenir, we have to clear in with the Port Captain here (and clear out again before we cross to Balboa, still in Panama, through the Canal). The Port Captain's office is a little hut, outside which an unhappy queue of yachtsman sit in the hot sun, clutching their files of boat papers, waiting impatiently for the glacial process within. Graham has had 3 days of this fun - on the first, Friday, after only 40 minutes' wait he was told that the Port Captain had run out of forms so could not proceed. He returned on Monday and after 2 hours' wait it was decided that the Port Captain would not be coming at all. Yesterday was, finally, successful after another 2 hours in the hot sun. Stupid bloody process!

Anyway the good news is that Erick the Agent (a sort of Fixer who knows the quirks of the system) demonstrated his worth and told us he'd managed to get an earlier slot for our transit. He managed a 3-day improvement so we now go on Monday 16th and the pressure is on to find two more volunteers to come with us as line handlers (we have one, an English chap called Paul who's sailing single-handed at the moment).

The process of going through the Canal, from a yachtsman's perspective is really well explained here

So, on with the boat jobs. Yesterday we managed to give the hull a good clean and polish so Maunie is gleaming and today Dianne has been reorganising and cleaning the aft cabin as a stowage area so that all we can have the forward cabin empty for two of our line handlers (the third will sleep in the pilothouse). Graham has given Winnie the Windpilot a service, ready for action in the Pacific, and is about to tackle changing engine fuel filters. Tomorrow we're off in a French yacht as line handlers and will be back Friday afternoon. Saturday will be all about shopping for food provisions - can't wait!

Preparing for the Canal

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.

In the queue for the Panama Canal

After the unspoiled delights of the San Blas islands it was quite a culture shock to sail towards Colon and see dozens of large ships anchored, waiting for their Canal transits. We threaded our way between them and arrived at Shelter Bay Marina on Thursday afternoon to start our own period of waiting.

The marina is in an old US Army base and is surrounded by jungle (we can hear the monkeys at night). The marina itself is pretty good, with a restaurant, mini-market and even a gym but around it are the decaying remains of the old base and it's a long taxi ride into Colon for shopping. We met our Agent, Erick, yesterday and he thinks it'll be about 9 days before we get our slot to get through the canal (it takes 2 days to complete the transit) so we have plenty of time to meet people and get the boat prepared. It's really hot and humid so Maunie has all her sun awnings rigged, together with a 'windscoop' which is like a little spinnaker set over the forward hatch to encourage airflow into the cabin.

Mainland Panama

Since we arrived in the Caribbean back in December, the wind has been a constant feature. The trade winds have blown consistently and briskly so we have become accustomed to the whistle in the rigging and the movement of the boat so it came as quite a novelty to have calm descend on us yesterday.

 

We left the San Blas islands at 8.30 and had a very pleasant reach westwards (Gallinago and Maunie flew their cruising chute spinnakers) until the breeze dropped away and we had to start engines. Our slow sailing speed meant that our original destination, a bay near the town of Portobello, would have been reached in darkness so we diverted to an amazing spot called Green Turtle Bay where, 15 years ago, a Panamanian business man started excavating a space for a marina in a mangrove-filled headland. This project moved very slowly but the first boats were admitted last year and the place is still very much work-in-progress (no toilets or showers yet), managed by an affable German yachtsman called Yogi. It's a pretty special place, though the number of very tame Swallows flying around the boats indicates the even bigger number of biting insects, so mesh screens were quickly fitted to all open hatches. We ate well at newly-built beach bar / restaurant last night.

 

Today we plan to head on about 30 miles to Shelter Bay near Colon, ready for the Panama Canal.

 

 

Fw: Our last full day in San Blas and Gallinago arrives

We've moved to a new anchorage in East Lemon Cays. It's positively crowded with yachts (about 15 from lots of different nationalities) and there's even a small bar on a nearby island where a couple of the local fishermen had enjoyed a beer or two too many last night. Otherwise, it's still pretty idyllic with a reef about three quarters of a mile to windward protecting us from the ocean swell and a smaller island providing an ideal spot for a bbq.

 

We are delighted that Matt and Charlotte on Gallinago have caught up with us after finally resolving their gearbox problems in Grenada. They had  a very fast, 7 day non-stop passage here and so we met up yesterday afternoon. Luckily their arrival also coincided with that of a grocery boat (another open motor boat, rather less well stocked than the last) so we managed to buy some beers, vegetable and a chicken which neatly solved the bbq menu plan for the evening. We'd introduced ourselves to the sole occupants of the island (Fernando and his wife) so were surprised that Snr Fernando arrived as we were eating on the beach with another yachty who acted as interpreter and explained that Fernando was upset that we were using his island without permission. Eventually, after much embarrassment, Fernando realised that we were actually the people who had come to see him and that the objects of his displeasure were a bunch of other yachties, who had by now left the island, who had built a huge bonfire of fallen palm leaves at the southern tip of the island without seeking any permission. He left, all smiles and apologies but the incident made us realise how little, thoughtless acts by visitors must have a big impact on these charming people. Certainly we were shocked to find four or five black bin bags of yacht rubbish leant against trees as though the bin men would magically come to collect them in the morning. Unbelievable.

 

This morning we have been visited by Venancio, Master Molas Maker, who brought a huge tub of beautifully hand-stitched Kuna embroideries and proudly showed us his work in a magazine.  Unlike most that we've been offered so far, he doesn't use a sewing machine and the stitching is almost invisible (Graham's mum, a mean embroiderer herself, would be impressed) so we succumbed to his patient salesmanship and bought four to be stashed away for cushions when we return home.

 

Anyway today will be our last day in the islands as we are heading west to Colon (specifically Shelter Bay Marina just inside the breakwater at the site of the old US Army base of Fort Sherman). We'll break the passage into a 50 mile and a 25 mile leg, stopping at a natural harbour called Portobello so that we can arrive at Shelter Bay in daylight – the approaches will be very busy with ships using the Canal. Our brief period of relaxation will be replaced with more boat jobs, lots of paperwork and officialdom and re-stocking the boat for the long Pacific legs ahead of us.