Sailing Blogs - Panama Canal

conrad  A few questions:  Do you use your own line for the locks or do the lock workers have lines they supply for the sailboat raftups?  What is the approx cost of the transit and the pilot for say a forty foot boat and does it vary with boat size or standard price etc  Is there a website to get specific requirement and cost of transiting the canal.  Thanks   Conrad

Conrad: Check out the Panama Canal cruising guide:

http://yachtpals.com/cruising/panama

Where I posted the costs of transiting the Panama Canal in the Panama Canal Cruising Guide section.

Also you might want to check out the other blogs and stories about Panama:

http://yachtpals.com/taxonomy/term/1986

Fair Winds,

Kim (seageek)

It was worth coming all this way just for the Panama Transit. - Will Anderson had long ago arranged to take most of his annual leave and fly to Panama to join us in time for the Panama Transit, on the grounds that this was one of the greatest ever engineering feats. And so it proved, with magnificent scenery to provide a suitable back-drop to the scale and complexity of the Canal itself.

Once our arrival had been suitably celebrated, we set to work on a multitude of tasks. First was to ensure Will's transit from the Airport to Shelter Bay Marina - a quiet but very well appointed marina situated in the largest of the old US Army Barracks (and former Jungle Warfare School), Fort Sherman (he of the tank), just on the West side of the North Entrance to the Panama Canal. (As an aside, paradoxically the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal is to the North and West of the Pacific Entrance, so the Canal runs from North North West to South South East). The nearest town to the Marina is Colon, notorious as one of the most dangerous cities in the world, especially for strangers in the night (© Frank Sinatra). So the World ARC staff kindly arranged for a Man with a Sign to meet Will at the airport and take him direct to the marina. Will's 24 hour journey ended with him arriving at 1 am in a ghostly harbour, where luckily his sleepy (and ancient, WRA) father was still about to greet him. With Will were traveling various essential spares, including the much needed hatch-cover and shrouds. The skipper therefore set about removing the old hatch, frame and all, and installing the new one - a straightforward but messy task involving a lot of Sikaflex and swearing. Once this had been done, Will had emerged from his pit, and in stark contrast to my Elizabeth-powered previous trip to the top of the Mizzen (which took a very long time), he shot me up the main-mast and the new shrouds were quickly installed. Tensioning them up took a lot longer, but Elizabeth enjoyed learning about yet another of the myriad tasks of preparing a yacht for sea and quickly got the hang of checking for alignment and setting the pre-bend in the mast. She also helped thread the new cable for the Navtex antenna, and as I write, this is proving more than its worth as we thread our way through the ex-Panama traffic.

But I digress. The Panama Canal defies most statistics, but 14000 or so ships transit every year, generating some US$3Bn for the Panamanian economy (no wonder they were pleased to see the Americans go), crossing the world's second-largest man-made lake (Gatun Lake) and going through one of the world's largest-ever cuttings. Every ship, no matter how large or small, has to be measured, and each requires at least a ream of paper (6 separate forms of non-standard size, and all in triplicate) to be completed before the vessel is allowed to be considered for a passage. Thereafter yachts are called forward in batches (flotillas?), being given at most 24 hours notice of day and timings. But this is where being part of the World ARC counts. World Cruising had contracted Match Shipping as their Agent, who as well as handing out individually logoed tee-shirts, handled all the details and communications of timings and provided long lines and professional line-handlers where necessary. For the transit, each and every boat has to have on board 4 lines of at least 120' and be crewed by at least a skipper and four crew. And here again, being part of a rally counts; we were able to borrow the irrepressible Janet Broadley (JB, an old Cleone hand) from our friends in Quasar V and did not have to resort to the expense of hiring an extra hand, as many other yachts do. And JB was not just a line-handler; she steered Cleone expertly into and through the the locks, and acted as Ship's Mate throughout our transit. - So after a couple of days of long lunches and sundowners and visiting and helping old and new World ARC friends, our allocation of a time on Sunday evening came through, (was it that short-time ago?), and at 1530 we cast off to go and anchor in a holding area, known as The Flats, just off the mouth of the Canal. Here, the lines arrived (2 for us, to add to our two long anchor warps - but ironically in practice for yachts, only two are ever needed), as did our advisor. Every ship and the larger yachts have to have a Pilot on board; smaller yachts are allowed the get by with an advisor, who is often a would-be pilot and who volunteers to do overtime to take yachts through the canal. Ours was the charming and thoughtful William, who rapidly became a friend to us all, and who, unusually, guided us on both days of our transit. We waited in the Flats until nearly 6pm, by which time it was dark, before up-anchoring and heading for Gatun Locks, just a few miles into the Canal. Huge ships passed us as we entered the buoyed channel (buoyed the wrong way round, in American style), and as we neared the locks with a brisk tail wind, we had the complicated task of making up our raft of 3 yachts. We were the port boat, with Nutella in the middle and Northern Sky to starboard of her. And as the smallest of the rafts, we were at the back of the lock, which is the calmest place to be. And here, the reason why only two long, heavy, lines are required became apparent. The middle yacht steers and powers the raft (with the other helmsmen acting in support), the port yacht handles the port lines, bow and stern, and the starboard yacht looks after the starboard lines. (As an aside, large ships are assisted through the locks by small but heavy and powerful "mules". These run on rails beside the lock, with lines running to the ship's winches. The mules act as moving bollards for the ships, as many as 8 per vessel). The Gatun Flight is an interconnected series of three locks which lift ships 85' to the top level of the canal. As we entered, two expertly thrown monkey's fists whistled across our fore and aft decks, we attached our prepared lines to them, and they were then walked up to two of the many large bollards on the lock sides, as dictated by our advisor. William (the advisor) then controlled us us we tensioned up the lines to slow and stop the raft, and position it in the centre of the lock. Not long after, the water boiled as it entered the lock, and Cleone and our raft lunged to and fro and back and forth as the lock filled. We were very glad of Will Anderson's strength in the bow, of Nutella's big engine, and Northern Sky's handling of the starboard-side lines. By the time we left the third lock, it was after 10 pm, and we were tired as we made our way into Gatun Lake itself, and a convenient and very peaceful anchorage. Here Chris - as always on duty in time of need or crisis - cooked us the perfect meal as we settled down for the night. But of course we did not go to sleep immediately as we should have done, afterwards we sat for ages in the cockpit over a bottle of wine, catching up with the gossip and speculating on the future.

We awoke on schedule (the advisor told us to be ready to go at 6am) to the sound of howler monkeys, a perfect still dawn and a cup of tea. Needless to say, our advisors arrived well after their expected time, but we were soon under way. Our passage lay through the Banana Channel (no one seems to know why it is called that), a small but very deep channel only used by yachts. It was spectacular, and we saw alligators and varieties of birds and wonderful scenery as we drank tea and attempted to keep up with the other yachts. All too soon we re-joined the main channel, to be greeted by a huge container ship traveling at 13 knots through the lake. Apparently there is no speed limit in the Canal; for ships it's "safe speed" as advised by the pilots. The wash was sharp and steep. The Canal is a surreal place. As you pass the spectacular flora and fauna, modern cargo and cruise ships steam by, dredgers do their work, and major construction work is carried out on either side of the cuts. I cannot describe the sheer scale of the canal; it has to be experienced. But towards lunch-time (sandwiches on the hoof) we began to slow for the three locks that lead down to the Pacific. As we neared, the advisors chatted on the radios, we hailed our fellow rafters and well before the lock (experts by this time) we had reformed for the descent. The process through the locks is the reverse of the Gatun flight, save that the three Pacific locks are a single upper lock followed by a tandem pair. We had been able to e-mail in advance, and from the correspondence, I know that several of you will have seen us on the web-cam as we went through the Milaflores lock, the last.

And so, dropping off the advisor as we went, out of the Canal, around the next point and into the Pacific and Flamenco Marina, just outside Panama City itself - but more of this anon. - Many thanks indeed and well done to Cleone and all of her crew; to JB for her help and support, to Chris for his sustenance and patience, to Will for his strength and humour (painful though the latter was at times) and Elizabeth for her enthusiasm, skill and cheerfulness. It was an unforgettable experience for us all.

James, JB, Chris, Elizabeth and Will

Yacht Cleone At Sea 07.14N 79.51W