For now I am going to try just a couple of pictures. I am lucky if I can get text posted. If we ever get to WiFi heaven I have a bunch to download. Like my new tattoo given to me by a bare chested 23 year old Panamanian Indian woman.

San Blas to The Panama Canal was a pretty easy run. We did it over two days. Buddy boating with our friends on Chez Nous. Linton the first night. Nothing much there. Kind of dirty. Great little restaurant that had mounds of good food for very cheap. $1.10 beers. Hope the health department never finds them. But I really don’t think there is one in Panama.

Then on to Shelter Bay Marina inside of the breakwater that is the entrance to the Panama Canal. Lots of BIG ships out on anchor waiting for their turn at it. Bob counted 38 or so. And these are huge container ships. It was a floating city.

Shelter Bay is nice. Nice and hot. And we feed a lot of mosquitoes. Eventually turned into a quest to find mosquito netting to drape over the bunks. Mine has nice frilly embroidering on it. Looks like  Panamanian version of a pretty pretty princess mosquito net. But they didn’t fall for it. Many many made it through and bit the S#$T out of me all night. So that’s two nights no sleep thanks to the little black salt water mangrove mosquitoes. Cannot wait to move on.

So we did. Through the Panama Canal.

The day before our transit we took a tour of the locks at Gaton. It is something. Let me tell you. And at 100 years old it is absolutely stunning in its scale and accomplishment. We were there for about an hour getting some idea of what we were going to go through the next day. But it turns out to be kind of like sitting across the street from a car wash and watching the cars go through. They go in one end and out the other but you really don’t have any idea what goes on inside. We learned that the next day.

VIBC made to the Panama Canal

The day of, we had a skippers briefing but sure still had a lot of questions that only the experience would answer. The process is basically that you raft up with two other boats. Cats in the middle. And proceed through the locks. The actual is something else. We were rafted up with two fifty foot monos. We must have been about 150,000 lbs of boats. We are 53,000 ourselves and we are not ballasted. Not an experience any of us have had before. We anchored out at a staging area called the flats. “F” dock for short. It’s along side the traffic route and when everyone is anchored and present they send out the advisor pilots. We were 14 boats going in four groups of three and one raft of two monohulls. Experience level of the skippers to this process….  Zero.  Experience levels of the pilot advisors…. Varies. Our advisor, Francisco Lopez, was excellent. 23 years at it. A couple of the other guys were very new. One boat had a trainee on board with their advisor. These guys are training and buying time to become a Panama Canal Pilot. There are only 300 of them and they make upwards of $300K a year. Obviously a desirable position. So we head down the lane toward the first Gaton Lock and about 1500 meters short we start the process of rafting up. Kind of like docking at about 3 knots. I am in the middle and am supposed to keep the bus on the white line. Which is interesting when a boat about your size ties up along side and then kills their engine. Until you get the boat on the other side rafted up it’s a little bit out of balance. For Francisco it was his 354^th transit with small yachts. For me it was like the first time skydiving. Intense. So we hit the first lock fine. As you come into the locks a line thrower up on the wall will toss down a small line with a weighted monkey fist at its end. They are about 3 stories above you at the top of the lock wall. They say don’t try to catch it. You will break your hand. The line is then attached to a long line that is carried on the two outside boats. The line handlers pull the lines up the wall and hang them on the “buttons” along the top of the wall when you are in an appropriate position. At least thats the theory. In practice we saw it go sideways several different ways.

Several of our 14 boat transit. The blue lines are the key to happiness.

Example:  Second lock. First day. First one went OK. We were getting a feel for it. They pump in 3 million gal of water a minute and raise you 9 meters. Gigantic swirling bathtub of brackish water. On the second lock the line handler got his toss line caught behind a chunk of 100-year-old rusty metal plate. It cut the line and dropped the big line into the canal. We were trailing it behind. Major bad thing. It is long enough that a following raft can get it into a prop and neutralize and engine. Our on board line handler made a new speed record for hauling in the now useless line. Useless because if it is on the boat and not attached to the wall you got nothing but a gnarly cement wall coming at you. At the same time the line handlers on the other side did their job and got hooked up. We were screwed. Panama Canal style. Our guys tied the loose line to the bowline and they pulled both up the wall to secure them. When the two tied together lines got to the top one guy went one way and the other guy the other. With the lines still tied together. More yelling and swearing. We have some of this on video. About this point they figured out that they could not untie the CF, they needed a knife. Which no one had. They started beating on the line with a piece of pipe against a rock. In the meantime I am using full throttle and bow thruster to try to keep the port boat off the wall. It did settle down and we finished the lock. I think I sweated about 1 ½ gallon during that brief time.

Anyway, one more lock after that and we are into Gatun Lake for the night. Its about 8:00 PM and has been dark for an hour or so. Strange anchorage, in the dark, quite small area, very deep water. Lovely. Violates about every rule about coming in to someplace new. Slept in the salon that night waiting for the anchor alarm to go off indicating we had drifted. Lots to drift into here. But it was a quiet night. Up at 5:00 to get ready for the pilot to get there at first light. Found out later that another boat in the next transit group hooked up on the tree or something and had to leave behind their anchor and 300 foot of chain. They are trying to arrange a diver and boat to go back and get it recovered. That shouldn’t cost much.

Day two of Panama Canal transit involved getting 27 miles across central Panama to the set of locks that lowers you into the pacific side. Gaton Lake crossing was beautiful. Tropical jungle. Saw Toucans and a fresh water crocodile. Then it got a bit uglier and it got into the area where they are constantly dredging and clearing. Even saw one big dynamite blast behind a hill. Scared the S#$T out of us. The concussion hit us in the chest. Big cloud of black smoke from behind the hill. Pretty cool.

One more line handler F’ up in the last lock and we were on our way. That was one heck of an experience I must say. Shoulder is very sore. I was at the helm for about 8 hours on both days. The O’l rotator cuff is a growling at me today.

So we anchor up at La Playita Marina. It will not be one of our favorites. Did a tour of a local indigenous tribe and a Panama City tour. I think we are done with the bus herd tours. Got some good pictures I will post sometime. WiFi still pretty ragged around here.

The kids in this house gave the head gear to Dawn. They were all smiles. 

Best part is Dawn joined us yesterday. Now the crew is complete for the passage to the Galapagos. A few days more here on repairs and provisions and we head off the Las Perlas. 45 miles or so off Panama. Rendezvous with the ARC fleet and stage for the 6 or 7 day passage.

All for now

M