In all the confusion that was our time in Panama City….we forgot to post about the Panama Canal. Before getting to Panama City we had signed up on a website that people who are transiting the Panama Canal use to find crew. When you take your boat through you need 5 people on board minimum (4 line handlers and the person steering). We were asked by s/v Saoroni to help them go from the Atlantic side to the Pacific. They had started cruising in 2006 leaving New Zealand and heading the other way around the world. They are now headed home. Anywho…early on the morning of the 16th of February we took off on a bus to head across Panama to Colon. Since Panama is so narrow, it was only a 2 hour bus ride. We met up with our boat and headed out that evening to transit the first part of the canal. Here are some pics.
We met up with Saorani at Club Nautico…quite the upscale establishment??? Whaaattt! Luckily, none of those boats are Saorani.
The first day we locked through the first set of locks called Gatun Locks. They consisted of 3 locks going up from the Atlantic side to Lake Gatun. We took on our pilot for that day on the Atlantic side. His job was to coordinate the three boats we would go through with and the timing with the lock operators.
The locks were no wider than the Chittenden Locks in Seattle, but much longer. Fun fact…the current locks are not big enough for the Super Panamax ships. So until the new locks are finished (which should have been in 2014) the Super Panamax ships offload onto the older Panamax ships at each end of the canal because only the Panamax ships can fit in the locks. More fun facts…instead of building the new locks to allow for even larger ships to be built in the future…they built them to the exact dimensions of the Super Panamax ships. How´s that for progress :-)
2014 was 100 years of the Locks being open…thus the reason they probably wanted the new locks to open that year…not sure what they were thinking…they are not even close this year!
These super powerful locomotives are attached on each side of the Panamax boats as they go through the canal. Apparently in the beginning the ships would lurch forward when the locks were equalized and bust through the front locks killing everyone below. They used to use huge sleds with horses….I would have liked to see that. Everything about the Panama Canal was an amazing feat in engineering.
We were three boats rafted together and suspended in the middle of the locks with a bow and stern line on each side. The trip up we were wedged in with this behemoth. Not quite sure what that name is all about??? Oh yeah…this is Sue, she is Geoff’s sister who flew all the way from England to help them go through the Locks.
Since sailboats generally move slower, we spent the night rafted up to a huge bouy in Lake Gatun with the other 2 boats. Had to get up bright and early at 0 dark thirty they next morning to make the 25 mile treck across the lake and down through the next three locks to the Pacific Ocean.
Lake Gatun was quite beautiful with lots of tributaries and islets. Nothing like I expected. Basically it is a man made lake. 2 large rivers feed into the lake that made the canal possible. No other boats are allowed on the lake due to the safety of the canal traffic, but also because the navigation is foul. There are full size trees still standing all along the route through the lake. Pretty weird looking.
There is a lot going on in the canal zone once you exit the Lake and start through the cut. Lots of dredging, constantly appparently due to silt build up.
It is a little overwhelming to see the size of these ships when you are only a few boat lengths away from them.
Some of the hugest equipment on the planet is being used in the canal zone right now.
This picture doesn´t quite capture the size of these dump trucks. But we could hardly even see the pick up next to one of them. This is the area of the new locks. They are building terraces along the cut to keep the sides from caving in. It is impossible to explain how much earth is being moved daily by these machines.
The Locks on the Pacific side consist of the Pedro Miguel locks (2) then the small lake Miraflores and then the big lock down to the Pacific Ocean Miraflores Lock. There is a viewing platform at the Miraflores lock that allows people to observe the locking process. There is also a webcam that we tried to get a screen shot of us going through, but lost the page due to internet or operator error:-)
CB and I in Moraflores Lake.
These locks are really old…100 years as I said earlier. When they made these locks the engineers knew next to nothing about the use of concrete in such big projects. When they poored these walls they did not use any rebar or reinforcement. This is just pure poored concrete…guess a little stress crack here and there is expected.
This is how our three boats were anchored in the locks. Apparently it is uncommon for just recreational boats to lock through alone. It is made very clear that we are a nuisance and these locks are for ships. But this day there were so many recreational vessels that they made the exception….it isn´t cheap to go through the locks, so maybe they made their per lock quota on this many sailboats:-)
Finally the Pacific Ocean…the Bridge of the Americas welcoming Saoroni back to her waters!!!
It was an amazing experience to go through the Panama Canal, if nothing else to mark it off the bucket list. But it made me realize how big of a deal the Seattle Locks are as well and what that engineering feat must have been like back in the day.
