New times for the transit

Tatt av vinden
Bjørn Larsen
Tue 6 Mar 2018 19:49

Good news! We shall leave the marina, Shelter Bay, where we have spent such a long time, since 2015, this afternoon, 4 pm (2200 CET) and go to the infamous “the Flats” and anchor there. In earlier days this was the place to stay at anchor outside Cristobal. (Cristobal is the port for Colon city). These days the Flats are only used for waiting for the advisor to show up. Our advisor shall board “Tatt av vinden” tomorrow at 5 am, when it is still dark, and we shall proceed to the Gatun locks. The plan is now to transit all the way to Panama City and Balboa Yacht Club during daytime tomorrow. All of it in daylight.

The Gatun locks will lift us up about 9 meters each of them. They are three, so when we reach the lake Gatun, we shall be about 28 meters above the sea. Then there are three locks, San Miguel and the Miraflores locks to bring us down again and into the Pacific. Here on the Caribbean side, the tide is about as in Oslo, shifting 0,5 m. On the Pacific side we shall encounter more like 5 meters.

The tradition is to raft up three sailboats together, we know that we shall go together with one called “Prairie Fox”, but we do not know if there is a third one.

We shall have linehandlers from “Alutia” (Birgitte and Olav) and “HarryZ” (Britt and Erik), so we shall be 6 Norwegians and the advisor.

 

We really have been looking forward to this day. It is great to us.