Fai Tira Blog Wednesday 10th February

Fai Tira Panama City 08:54.47N 79:31.60W

 

So,     the daunting but pleasurable task of describing our passage through the Panama Canal falls to me.

Where to start, how to convey immense sense of scale, the experience, apprehension, anticipation and, above all, feeling of childlike excitement,

Well the beginning always seems to have a habit of being the best starting point, so that’s where I’ll go. Our journey commenced at 1.30pm on Monday. This was all to be under power and, at times, doing speeds that would test our engines’ fortitude. We left the Shelter Bay Marina with the biggest crew that’s been on board since we’ve owned the boat. Carol from Bali Blue, Paul from Jackamy, J from Chisel (also known as Chsalonina) and, of course, Pete and myself. All this was in order to comply with the canal regulations that each yacht contained four line handlers to manage the 125 foot long warps that would position us centrally in each lock.

Before long our boat was joined by those of Enchantress and Mercury Rising, both were to be our sailing companions during the transit. Not far away was Peregrina, another of the BWR boats. We headed out, into one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and on to the holding area known as the Flats, to rendezvous with pilots boats, where we were each to pick up our individual Panama pilots, who would oversee our daily journey.

The Canal Crew and heading to pick up our Canal Advisors.  Left to right Paul, Pete, John, Carol and J.

 

Straight away this felt special. We were leaving the Atlantic that had been our home for the last 6 months. We would pass through one of the greatest feats of civil engineering ever.   At the Atlantic end, our boat would be lifted 85 feet in 3 stages. Travel 31 miles and then drop 85 feet in a further 3 stages. We would rub shoulders with countless pages of history and cross beautiful lakes flanked with lush rain forests before shooting the Bridge of Americas to enter the vast area of water known as The Pacific Ocean...........How could we not be excited????

This felt just like what it was. One of the great shipping centres of the world and here we were in our small convoy, part of it......... What exotic theatre!!!

The First Lock

 

The atmosphere of anticipation was palpable. We were like the proverbial dog with two tails (least I think it’s tails??)

Everything looked larger than life. We were surrounded by a whole range of massive ships, sometimes towering above us. The shore was lined with huge storage areas and buildings together with lines of tall, statuesque cranes all looking as though they were standing on sentry duty.

Cranes

 

Our early arrival, at the flats, had us milling around for a period. We then decided to anchor and wait. It wasn’t long before the pilot boat arrived. Our pilots then had to make the leap across boats to join us. We had been warned of the, sometimes, cavalier approaches as the pilot boat skippers came in bow first as though they were making an attempt at T boning. In the event they were great, gently pulling alongside and making a smooth and effortless transfer in spite of the intimidating size of their vessels.

 

The name of our guy, who would see us through the first three locks and into Gatun Lake, was Dalton Rodriguez a young and affable family man. He was in possession of a degree, had a fantastic wealth of knowledge and sense of pride about the canal, was really communicative, and had a brilliant command of English.

 Dalton Rodriguez and the Skipper.

 

Our first challenge was to provide him with an acceptable lunch time snack and cold non alcoholic drink (where were we supposed to find that on our boat??)

A rummage in the fridge revealed a cold coke and another, in one of the bilges, produced a tin of ham. A three day old baguette came miraculously to hand, so we were in business. He thought it was great and we were off to a flying start.

We all set off, individually, towards the first lock.

 

With the expectation mounting as it came into view, we slowed and positioned ourselves into the formation for rafting. Mercury Rising, with its bow thrusters and rubber tyre fenders, would be the central boat. We would be secured, in a staggered position to prevent spreaders tangling, to her port beam, with Enchantress similarly secured to starboard. Then as one complete unit, we lined up astern of the cargo ship, Southern Bay Monrovia and followed her into the lock entrance, with us in turn being followed by another raft containing the other BWR boat Peregrina.

As we entered men, on the walls above, threw heaving lines complete with monkey fists. These tightly bound knots acted like missiles, guiding the lines to their destination. This can be a risky procedure as David on Enchantress found out, when one crashed against his spray hood window smashing the glass into splinters.

The line handlers first job was to secure the lines to the bowline prepared warps.

As the boats moved forward the men above went ahead, climbing as the height of the wall increased until they were way above our heads, before pulling in the warps and tying us off to a bollard in the sky.

 One of the line handlers.

 

We were now encased by a wall of massive concrete blocks and the huge steel gates closed slowly behind us, now making our chamber complete.........What an eerie sensation!

The water used to flood the locks is provided from the man-made Gatun lake and is gravity fed via a system of culverts each large enough to accommodate a locomotive. It then enters several lateral culverts running under the lock chamber, each of these has five, four and a half foot diameter holes. The water is then distributed through 100 holes in the chamber floor.    52 million gallons of fresh water are used during the passage of one ship between oceans, its task complete the water then flows, uninterrupted, into the ocean.

This was what we’d all been waiting for. Dalton was directing operations, brilliantly, on our boat. I was on the bow and responding as fast as I could to his instructions to keep the line taught while, at the same time, waiting for the infamous surge..............! It never actually came. The levels rose rapidly, my activity increased and before long we were there, with me feeling more than just a bit puffed and looking back in amazement at the level we’d just come from.

 

 

Two locks later and now early evening, we entered Gatun lake and headed for the big mooring buoy that was to be our overnight stop. At this point the raft had to split in order to distribute the load more evenly round the buoy, a manoeuvre that involved an action man, macho type leap on to its’ surface by Tim off  Mercury Rising, before tying up. Once secured, it was goodbye and a big thanks to Dalton.

All rafted up.

 

 A well earned celebratory beer, food prepared by Carol and myself and then it was party time. They started on individual boats  merging as we became more lubricated and went on through the night ( and I do mean through the night) with the guys from, the now newly named Mercury Riesling, falling asleep briefly where they sat before the rude awakening at the arrival of the new pilots, at 6am, for the next stage of the journey

Our new pilot was called Amado Castillo, another guy with impeccable credentials and personality to match. We now had a time constraint for the completion of the 31 miles of Gatun Lake and set off, us leading, the engine almost flat out, making six knots plus and with some very second hand crew members on board.

Gatun Lake early morning with Amado Castillo

 

Our pace was good and we made the entry to the lock at Pedro Miguel in quick time for the first stage of our decent. Once through we entered Miraflores Lake and travelled the mile to the two stage lock at Miraflores, where we made our final decent. It was witnessed via the web cam by Pete’s wife Judy and many of our friends in Dartmouth and bought us down to the level of the Pacific.

Big Ships and the Centenary Bridge.

 

We were on our final run in and on a high, reflected by the continuous banter coming across the VHF

We passed the many massive engineering projects, sometimes removing whole islands, as they seem to continually modify the approaches and incorporate new lock systems in order to accommodate the ever increasing size of vessels. Then before long our goal and the subject of many conversations came into sight, The Bridge of The Americas. I’ve seen more exciting looking structures, but never any with more significance. Then out came the gin and tonics as we passed under.

The Bridge of The Americas

 

With the amazingly spectacular skyline of Panama City acting as the backdrop the picture was complete.

Welcome to the Pacific.....................!!

 

For an opportunity to read more about the canal and its’ history go to the link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bye for now,  Pete and John.