Through the Panama Canal

There is a good Wikipedia article on the Canal here - and of course other sites to look at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal

I joined David Hetherington and his daughter Sarah in Panama last Wednesday and we went by bus up to Colon, the city at the Atlantic-Carribean end of the Panama Canal. The bsut station there was a short taxi ride to the Panama Yacht Club and we found NEREID moored there with the other three (Dirk, Andrew and Michael) onboard to welcome us. Dirk is David´s brother in law, Michael was at school with him - Michael is also on the Board of the SMSA which is how I got into this adventure. They all brought the yacht over from St Maarten in the Carribean.

The bus journey from Panama to Colon was uneventful - couldn´t see much as the curtains on the bus were mostly closed against the midday sun.

Colon is a really awful place. Lonely Planet guide says ¨hardened travels pale at the mentio¨n of the place¨. It is so dangerous we were not allowed out onto the streets by the locals fearful for our safety. So taxi everywhere we needed to go. Dirty, run down, hot and dusty. A most unhappy place.

We had to stay 3 nights there waiting for a space to enter the canal. Everyone is alloted a date and time, and small craft have to go into the Gatun locks behind a large ship, and in company with two other small craft.

So at 4.30 on Saturday we left the Yacht Club and motored out to a holding ground. Once the pilot came aboard we set off into the channel and waited for our tanker to come through.

We met up also with an American and a French yacht and followed our tanker to the first lock.

The Gatun locks have three chambers and raise ships 26 meters into Gatun lake. This large artificial lake allows ships to cross the divide (see the map in the Wikipedia article).

It took us 3 hours to get through the locks and into the lake.

We were put to a large buoy overnight. At 7.30 another pilot came aboard and we cast off to motor down to Pedro Miguel lock (one chamber) which dropped us into Miraflores Lake and thence into the two chambers of the Miraflores locks. We emerged an hour later and motored out of the canal under the Bridge of the Americas (Puente de las Americas) and to an anchorage for the night.

I shall have to write more on this later as my time is running out for the moment.