Panama Canal transit/Bye bye Caribbean hell-ooooo Pacific!

 

Tuesday 7^th March, Amador, Panama City.

Still in Panamá! Oh yes indeedy, still here. But we're on the Pacific side now, yay. You know what that means....we made it through the Canal!!! So because we're very excited about that (well, Karl and I are, Gráinne's a bit more blasé having been there done that twice before) I'm going to inflict a Panama Canal blog entry on you.

So after all our prepping and cleaning and fixing and paperworking and waiting around for parts-ing we finally decided we were ready for the transit and got in touch with our agent, Stan the Man, to let him know we were rearing to go anytime he could get us a slot. So he got us a slot. A week and a half away. Sigh. Might as well have been years. So we did a bit more local exploring, cycles through the forest, picnics at Fort Lorenzo, incursions into Fort Sherman and that sort of thing. Actually the Aeronaval suddenly started doing some exercises that involved a lot of shooting, machine gun takatakatakatakataka style, so things got a bit noisy there for a while.

Mini-bikes very much enjoyed the gloriously smooth road through the forest.

View towards Fort Lorenzo from the mouth of the Chagres river. Mini-bike complete with esky full of picnic.

UNESCO listed Fort Lorenzo protected the mouth of the Chagres river - a very important route for Peruvian goods heading back to Europe in the days of the Spanish Empire. Not much about the landscape has changed since that time.

Picnic time.

Karl wandering through the jungle that is slowly reclaiming the remains of Fort Sherman (former US base protecting the Canal Zone).

An old church at Fort Sherman

Mini-bike incursion on the runway at Fort Sherman

A disused battery at Fort Sherman

While we were doing our best to pretend to be enjoying all this what was really going on was a growing sense of dread at the task ahead. Karl's biggest source of concern was his engine – would it last, could it go fast enough, would it overheat??? My biggest source of concern was hosting and feeding three linehandlers, one canal adviser and their four man-sized appetites.

A super-brief history of the Canal for context (skip straight past this paragraph if this isn't your thing). Ever since Balboa marched across from the Caribbean to the Pacific side of the Panamanian isthmus back in 1513 the fantasy of an easy way to bring goods through this 80km stretch of land and straight back across the Atlantic, instead of tens of thousands of sea miles from Southeast Asia and South America via the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, back to the markets of Europe had inspired all sorts of dreams. By the 19th century a railway had been completed and met with huge commercial success, particularly in transporting people from the east to the west coast of America during the Californian Gold Rush. The French twice tried to build a canal in the 19th century but a combination of technical barriers and illnesses (malaria and yellow fever) meant failure. Then the US decided they were interested in taking on the contract but ran into difficulties in negotiating terms with the Colombian government (current Panama was then part of Columbia). So the US let it be known that should the state of Panama want to secede from Colombia that they would probably recognise a new state of Panama if they were interested in negotiating a Canal contract and Panama made it known that they may be open to more favourable contract conditions if they were to become independent. And so that's what happened: Panama declared independence, US navy ships hovered protectively nearby, Colombia stayed out of it all, treaty terms were negotiated and the Canal project began. And has been a rousing success ever since.

But back to our transit. We'd been given a transit date of Saturday 4^th March (the day the UN High Seas Treaty was agreed as it turned out) but wouldn't get a firm time until the day before. Usually a transit takes two days – leaving one afternoon/evening, spending a night on a mooring in the lake on the way across and completing the transit the next day. Sometimes people are given a one day transit. On Friday morning when we were 90% ready to go and expecting to have all day Friday and Saturday morning to finish things up Stan the Man called to let us know we would have a one day transit starting at 5am the next morning. Panic stations. Karl went back to staring at his engine and fretting while I hit the galley with a vengeance preparing mountains of food. Because of our early start our three professional linehandlers had to spend the night before aboard Gráinne (whose guest cabin is now a storeroom) and needed a good feed when they arrived. Alex, Alex Dos and Manuel were incredibly polite (they even washed up after dinner!) and about as unobtrusive as three big burly men can be and we all managed to squeeze into sleeping spots (one man on the couch, two men in the cockpit) for the “night”. I say “night” because we had to pick up our adviser at 0500 (in the dark!), which meant leaving the dock at 0430 (in the dark!), which meant getting up at vomit o'clock in order to ensure full caffeination prior to any important manoeuvres.

Gráinne waiting very patiently at Shelter Bay Marina (photo courtesy of the Silver Chief drone extraodinaire) before the big Operation Turn Around where we pointed her towards the exit.

The Big Day dawned. Actually it was way before dawn but we were up and off right on time as planned. A smooth getaway from the dock, didn't hit any other boats in the dark, didn't run aground in the channel, all good, sighs of relief all around. Then we circled for a bit in the bay with our buddy boats, Salty Ginger (Canadian) and Audacia (Kiwi), waiting for the arrival of our advisers (like pilots, but for the small boats). The lancha carrying our adviser approached us, floodlights blazing, and Hector lept across onto Gráinne like he was channeling Jason Bourne. And then it was full steam ahead (actually it was 1900 revs, Karl doesn't approve of full steam) to the first set of locks while quickly grabbing some sandwiches I'd made as an early morning snack and ensuring Hector was also fully caffeinated (I told you, catering had become my obsession). Arriving at Gatun locks we rafted up to our buddy boats and hoped the guy in the middle knew how to drive.

Circling with our buddy boats (Salty Ginger in the photo) in Limón Bay waiting for the arrival of our canal advisers, with the port of Colón in the background.

Approaching Gatun locks rafted up to Audacia with Salty Ginger on the far side.

But do we really have enough fenders out?

And into the lock we go, squeezing in behind our big buddy ship.

When we had come through as linehandlers on Alchemy a couple of weeks earlier it had been all busy busy busy through these locks (coming through alone required work from all four linehandlers) but now in the raft we had an excess of crew so (after watching them like a hawk through the first lock and seeing they were extremely diligent and competent) I got to just sit back and enjoy the ride as we were gradually lifted up to 26m (or nearly 8 stories) above sea level through the three locks.

Not a chartplotter view we are used to seeing.

As the gate closed behind us in the first lock Karl finally (finally!) got to wave goodbye to the Caribbean. And everything went perfectly smoothly. Not a single drama. Not one.

Bye bye Caribbean, it was nice knowing you.

Karl gossips with the skipper of Audacia as we reach the top of the first lock, the Caribbean and Puente (bridge) Atlántico in the background.

Next, out of the locks and motoring across Gatun Lake – the big test for Karl's engine. He distracted himself by cooking breakfast for us all while I took over the helm. And all was good. The breakfast was hot, the engine was cool, the eggs were runny and the crew was happy. The scenery through the lake is lovely. It's all forest, undeveloped apart from the Canal and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and you could be fooled into thinking you were on a lovely day cruise of a remote lake until a great big hulking ship appears around the corner. And then another one.

Ships come out of the trees around these parts.

Me at the helm pretending not to worry about the looming ship.

Karl and Hector both very alert to the pending tight corner/large ships combination.

                                           

Gráinne mixes it up with the big guys.

On the far side of the lake you get to the canal-like bit of the Canal. This is the very obviously man-made section of the Culebra (or Gaillard) Cut which was one of the major pieces of work and a massive logistical and engineering nightmare as well as a death trap for the workers. It is extremely impressive. Almost as impressive: Karl's engine just kept on going and at some point around here he decided it was probably going to be alright. The crew wolfed down my enormous bowls of pasta for lunch just before it was time to raft up again to Audacia and Salty Ginger for the next set of locks.

Approaching the Culebra Cut which, believe it or not, has been widened several times since the original canal construction.

Rafted up for the final push.

We were on the downhill now, both literally and metaphorically. One lock at Pedro Miguel, a quick trip across Miraflores Lake still rafted up with Audacia doing the heavy lifting and then the two final Miraflores locks. At Miraflores there's a webcam for the people at home and a viewing platform for the tourists on site so we had our filmstar moment. The wonderful former crew of Umnyama were kind enough to take screenshots from the webcam and make a timelapse video for us of Gráinne's trip through the lock as a souvenir of the Big Day.

In the Miraflores lock waiting to be dropped down to the Pacific.

Our linehandlers watching the tourist hoards on the balcony of the yellow visitors' centre watching us watching them watching us.

                                   

Karl's latest dream job - driving one of these little locomotives that pull the big ships into position. I swear this ship scraped the sides the whole way through the lock.

Our big ship buddy squeezes in behind us (the rule is that in a lock going up the small boats are behind the big ships, in a lock going down the big ship is behind the small boats).

Courtesy of the wonderful former Umnyama crew, timelapse of our Miraflores adventure.

And then the final lock opened and we were back in the Pacific! Woohoo!!! We unrafted and said goodbye to Salty Ginger and Audacia, motored the final few miles to drop off our crew and adviser at the Balboa Yacht Club and then (alone again!) continued on past views of Panama City to anchor at La Playita. We cracked the champagne, watched our timelapse video of Gráinne over and over again and kept pinching ourselves that we had actually done it.

The lock opens and we're back in the Pacific!

Joining the parade of ships passing under the Puente de las Americas (sister of the Sydney Harbour Bridge just without the stone pylons).

The Panamá City skyline behind the Amador Causeway, haven't had a city view since.....Durban?

A Pacific sunset at the end of a long day.

And now we're waiting here for a weather window to the Galapagos. Us and a million other boats. We have great running/cycling/walking paths along the causeway with views of the Puente de las Americas and the city skyline, it's a quick Uber ride to town and the local mini-super sells $1 beers and has conveniently located tables right outside and a bottle opener tied to their door. Not a bad life. Silver Chief came through the Canal the day after us and have since departed for the unspoilt beaches of Las Perlas. This afternoon we caught up with the crew of Matilda who we first met in Cairns back in 2019 when we were young and green and innocent. Back then they welcomed us, pointed us in the direction of all the services that we needed to fix all the things that were broken, loaned us their ute and promised to meet us in the Pacific. Since then they have circumnavigated Tasmania, done a Sydney to Hobart, sold their Cairns boat, bought Matilda in the Mediterranean, sailed across the Atlantic and now have caught up with us. Bloody Legends.

The crews of Gráinne and Silver Chief celebrating successful canal transits with sundowners on Gráinne's foredeck.

Finally, for those of you who have lasted this long, bonus video that Karl made with his GoPro. He spent  considerable time getting his camera into the perfect position hauled halfway up the mast and is very proud. So this is us going through the last three locks and into the Pacific.

Possible Oscar nomination for best short film next year: Panama Canal Transit Timelapse