Panama Canal

S/V Mañana successfully transited the Panama Canal on December 26, 2009.  Because of the holidays there were few cruisers at the Balboa Yacht Club when we went looking for crew (many had traveled inland, flown home, or just left for other locations for the holiday week), but we managed to find a truly international crew to man our lines. Each small boat moving through the Canal is required to have at least four line handlers aboard in addition to the captain (me) and a Canal Advisor.  Andrea would get one line, and we coaxed our solo sailing friend Edward (South Korea) into helping. We also found two boatless travelers, Thomas (French) and Daniele (Italian), who were looking for a ride to Portobello on the Caribbean side so we hastily added them to the crew. Both Thomas and Daniele are hoping to find a ride across the Pacific, but for now they were happy to get to Portobello where they had a friend with an extra room. Along with the Panamanian advisor and the two Americans (us) we had a regular United Nations crossing.

 

We had already lined both sides of the boat with tires to prevent damage in case the turbulent waters in the locks bounced us around too much, and we had rented four 125’ long lines as required by the Canal Authority. The crew was ready at 7 AM as requested, and the advisor came aboard at 8 AM, but he brought news that we would not enter the first lock (about 4 miles away) until 10:30 because the Mexican tall ship was going through that day. We had really hoped that we could share the locks with this ship which would transit with much pomp and circumstance and flags flying. The late start would mean a two day transit with an overnight at anchor in Lake Gatun.  For us a one day transit would have been much more convenient.  When we did our practice passage of the Canal we had also been forced to stop in the lake for the night. While we were swimming in the first fresh water that we had seen on the entire trip an ACP boat (canal administration) came over to warn us that lake swimming was verboten because of the crocodiles.  Oops! This time there would be no scheduled swim break.

 

 

We passed through the Miraflores Locks first and then the Pedro Miguel Lock. In each of these locks we were side tied to a sightseeing boat, and that made our passage much, much easier. The excursion boat was a large ferry, and she side tied to the wall so all we had to do was get our lines over to her and then hang on.  The ferry entered the lock first, and our only job was to maneuver into position. Our daughter managed to catch us live in the locks on the Canal webcam. 

 

We exited the Pedro Miguel Lock at noon and began the long motor trip (no sailing allowed) through the Culebra Cut and into Lake Gatun. This motor section of the trip was to take about 5 hours and covered about 25 miles.  During this time we took turns steering, served lunch to everyone, sat in the sun and relaxed.  The Lake is (was?) the largest manmade lake in the world and was created by damming the Chagres River as it flows into the Caribbean. The first three locks had raised the boat to the lake level some 84 feet above sea level. At the other side of the Canal we would pass through three more locks dropping down to sea level again, but the dam and the locks keep the lake level at 84 feet.  This was a change from the original design of the canal which was supposed to be a sea level canal (like the Suez) with no locks, but the difficulty of digging, the constant land slides, the ever increasing width of the bottom of the canal (which then required many times more width at the  top of the cut to prevent slides) led to the failure of the French effort, and the Americans opted for the more complicated lock system. The locks are water inefficient because none of the water is recycled.  It just runs out to sea.  Each series of lock openings uses about 1 million gallons of fresh water so even if our small boat was in the locks all alone we would need that much water to transit. New locks are under construction and they are designed to address this problem.  Given the traffic in the Canal you can only guess at the amount of rainfall that Panama gets to keep replenishing the lake.    

As we approached the Gatun Locks (and the nearby anchorage where we expected to spend the night) Andrea and Edward went to work on the advisor trying to get the trip completed that night. Fortunately we had (1) treated the advisor very well, feeding him constantly, and (2) he had previously worked in Canal Control so with a bit of effort on his part he managed to schedule a night entrance into the locks that we would share with a 700 foot tanker. We really appreciated the advisor’s extra effort because it meant he would spend another two hours aboard instead of heading home early to Panama City. In Gatun Locks we agreed to be tied to the wall, but with less turbulence on the downward trip this was okay.  Our line handlers were great and we arrived at Shelter Bay on the Caribbean side at about 9 PM.  We tied up and quickly opened the beer cooler.  We were happy, tired and relieved. 

 

 

Our top line handler Edward deserves a special paragraph to himself. Edward had a small retail business in Indiana that didn’t survive the recession. He and his wife, Jade, thought perhaps they would return to Korea, but since Edward always wanted to go sailing he thought this was an opportunity knocking.  They flew to St. Martin (Windward Islands of the Caribbean), bought a 36’ Beneteau sailboat, took TWO DAYS of sailing lessons, and headed out for Cartegena, Colombia.  He admitted he had no previous sailing experience but “I read a lot of books”. Jade had never been on a sailboat. They left St Martin  in late October (too early) and headed west (wrong direction) and predictably got hit with the late season storms. They got knocked down, they got rolled, they got a lot of wind and 20’ seas.  They also reached Cartegena (somehow) and after a three week layover headed for Panama, and  they made it.  Now Edward is fixing the boat and preparing to cross the Pacific to South Korea… by himself.  Jade went home. They are still married, but she is not getting back on the boat again. I give the guy a lot of credit for striking out on a trip that even seasoned sailors would balk at, on a boat that might be a little less than a blue water boat, and on a boat that was bought out of charter, i.e. needs repairs. His comment was “The books don’t tell you how hard it is”. 

Happy New Year

Tom and Andrea 

Las Perlas

We have been in Panama City and the neighboring Las Perlas Islands for almost 4 weeks now.  What had originally been planned as an early December passage of the Panama Canal has now become a Christmas trip (yes, we are scheduled to cross on Boxing Day). We have transited the canal once already, but we did it as crew on another sailboat. Each small boat that transits the locks is required to have at least 4 line handlers on board, and we volunteered to help a solo sailor make the crossing.  In addition to Andrea and I, he had recruited two bicyclists who wanted to make the trip from Panama to Cartegena, Colombia. Marc and Indira are both photographers, one from Spain and the other from Chile, who were bicycling from Alaska to Argentina. At this point the roads into Colombia pretty much disappear into the jungle so they chose to make part of the trip by volunteering as crew on a sailboat. The fact that they had no sailing experience and  had never been to sea did not seem to faze them in the least. We loaded their bikes on deck and off we went. That canal crossing took two days because we missed our scheduled lockage on the other end (Gatun Locks) and had to spend the night anchored in Lake Gatun before we could continue north. After reaching the Shelter Bay Marina Andrea and I treated ourselves to a night in a hotel before taking the bus back to Panama while the others continued sailing east. Our bicyclists have a web site at 2Greenprints.org.  The web site is “en espanol” but they may have put up some pictures of the crossing by now. One interesting sidelight was that they normally stayed at firehouses all along the way.  Every town had one, they were safe, they could share kitchen facilities and the firemen were usually very welcoming.

 

You can check out the Panama Canal and Lake Gatun on Google Earth.  You will see the mooring field at the Balboa Yacht Club (8° 56.211'N 79° 33.374'W), the Bridge of the Americas (which provides a beautiful night scene when lit up) (8° 56.604'N 79° 33.900'W), the two locks at Miraflores (8° 59.723'N 79° 35.412'W), the Pedro Miguel locks, the infamous Culebra Cut that required so much work to complete that it defeated the French (along with the mosquitoes) (9° 3.228'N 79° 39.378'W), the huge above sea level Lake Gatun, the three Gatun Locks (9° 16.482'N 79° 55.338'W) and finally the long channel out to the Caribbean through Colon harbor.  Whew! Quite an experience. We are worriedly looking forward to our own passage in our very small boat. On our first trip through we were locked in with a Panamax freighter (maximum size for the Panama Canal) that dwarfed the sailboat we were on. We worry that Mañana will not have the engine capacity to maintain the required speed and to handle the strong currents in the locks. If there are no more posts after this one then our worries were justified.

 

Panama City is also the gateway to Las Perlas Islands (8° 37.585'N  79° 1.825'W), over 100 tropical islands just 40 miles offshore.  After our canal adventure we spent a week in Las Perlas swimming, cleaning the bottom of the boat, and enjoying anchorages in near deserted coves and beaches. About a thousand people live in Las Perlas and many are descendents of slaves brought here by the Spanish to harvest the oyster pearls that give the islands their name. Queen Victoria’s pearls originated here. Panama’s history is one of piracy and conquest because the narrow isthmus was the most convenient way to transport the riches of Peru back to Europe. The pirate Henry Morgan figures prominently in any story about the old cities and islands that date from the early 1500s. 

 

We returned to Panama from Las Perlas to pick up Liz (ex-wife #1) and her boyfriend Mike who flew in to Panama for a winter break from the weather on Cape Cod, and then sailed back to Las Perlas for another visit. While Liz and Mike were here we got some of the best sailing of the year along with good snorkeling each day. We also set records for beer consumption, sunburns, jellyfish stings, etc. Yep, last day of the trip we swam through the jellyfish while snorkeling.  I didn’t even know I was allergic to jellyfish.  What I got was a bad rash very much like poison oak that lasted about three days. However even the jelly fish couldn’t spoil what was a great week .

 

Christmas is just around the corner and Panama is decorated with Santas and reindeer and cute little signs that say “Let it snow…”.  All of the carols are the same (with some translation needed) and they dream of a white Christmas and sleigh bells ringing. Everything would be perfect if it weren’t 95 degrees and humid each day. The prospects of a Christmas tree surviving the heat must be dim, but we see Christmas pines for sale, and gift paper with pictures of Santa in his full red suit.

I repeat myself when I say Panama has been a wonderful experience. Great sailing, beautiful islands all along the coast, friendly people, clean, relatively safe, and very hospitable to tourists and retirees. We are in awe at the size and number of freighters passing continuously each day to enter the canal, and we even got a close up view of the Mexican tall ship with all hands manning the yardarms as it entered the canal.

 

We have spent the last few days getting all of the permits to transit the canal and paying our fees (about $1,000) for the trip. Panama still has the Latin American penchant for paperwork.  Even the modern computers in each office have not changed the reliance on carbon paper for copies. This transit is the big deal for us because when we left California our single goal was “the Panama Canal”.  Of course we now plan to sail much further, but this was what we set out to accomplish over two years ago.  We are excited. Christmas at the Balboa Yacht Club and then Caribbean. Hello!!!!!

 

Merry Christmas to All,

 

Tom and Andrea

It was a dark and stormy night

 

The next leg of the trip was to be a 24 hour sail from Benao to Panama (Panama City is referred to as Panama much the way NYC is simply New York). We got underway about 11 AM figuring that the 24 hour sail would have us arriving safely at mid-day on the Island of Taboga ( 8° 48.000'N 79° 33.250'W) just 7 miles from the Balboa Yacht Club and Panama. The first 6 hours were great as we sailed merrily along rounding Punta Mala (Bad Point) ( 7° 25.000'N 80° 0.000'W) mid afternoon. Just before dark the storm clouds appeared on the horizon and the skies blackened appreciably.

 

Then the storm hit. We were sailing on a moonless night, pitch black, pouring rain, moving along at 7 knots under sail, and we could see about 3 feet ahead. We were wet and blind. It was very much like driving through a large cow pasture with your headlights turned off. You’re pretty sure there was nothing in front of you, but you can’t tell for sure. God forbid one of the cows got left out. We had planned our route to avoid the shipping lanes for the big freighters exiting the Canal so our chief worry was the smaller fishing boats. I will only say that it was not a pleasant night, but we did arrive safely at Taboga, in a driving rain, almost exactly as planned.

Taboga is a residential island with small homes and weekend homes. It is only a short ferry ride from the city but with only one ferry a day each way it is not suitable for commuting so it has retained its island atmosphere. We had met one of the residents of Taboga in Puerta Vallarta two years ago who runs a small mooring rental business on the island, and as soon as we arrived we hooked up to one of his moorings for our stay. We took time to explore the town, the beach and the bars, and we took advantage of the ferry to cross to the mainland to find a hotel and to explore the city.

 

This was our first glimpse of the city and we were impressed. Panama has a skyscraper skyline. There is a lot of new building going on and the country appears to be thriving. We walked the Casco Antigua (Old Compound). Casco Antigua was the center of the city during the canal building of the late 19^th century and the area very much resembled the architecture of New Orleans with two and three story buildings with elaborate iron balconies. We also visited two impressive shopping malls: Multi Plaza was a decidedly upscale mall selling a lot of goods we could not afford (think Neiman Marcus, Tiffany, very chic) and Albrook Mall was the largest mall I have ever seen anywhere. No, I have not been to the Mall of America in Minnesota, but we have nothing in CA to rival the size of this mall. There must have been over 100 eating places in the food court alone. The place was packed on a Monday afternoon. Panama is indeed experiencing a thriving economy right now with an impressive standard of living.

 

 

Panamanians are very friendly and seem genuinely happy to see visitors. There is not as much English spoken here as I would have expected since the Canal Zone was under US control until 2000, and we understand that the education level is not as good as that of Costa Rica, but the petty crime is not the problem it was in Costa Rica and the availability of goods in Panama is incredible. I can think of nothing that I could find in the US that is not available here from food to clothes to electronics to whatever. If you need it you can find it in Panama (albeit with several bus rides involved).

We moved the boat from Taboga to the Balboa Yacht Club where we are hanging on a mooring within 100 feet of the ship channel, and we can watch the big, big freighters slide slowly by on their way to the first of the locks. The yacht club is in a beautiful park like area that was once the site of a US Army base. We have seen pictures of the area in the 1930s that show barracks and drill fields where there are now trees and walking paths along the shore. We are getting a chance to meet cruisers from all over the world. Our trip down the Pacific Coast of Latin America has crossed paths with several boats making a trip similar to our own, but here in Panama we are at a crossroads for boats sailing north from Ecuador, west from Europe and the Carribbean and east from, well where we came from. There are many, many people in all stages of their voyages that stop at the BYC for a while (and stay even longer).

Trivia item: The Panama Canal runs North to South (not East to West as we might think in moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean) for the 50 miles across the Isthmus of Panama. This is the shortest distance between the seas in all of the Americas. When Balboa crossed this narrow isthmus heading south from the Caribbean he “discovered” this huge southern ocean which he named the Pacific. Since that time mariners have generally referred to the Pacific as the “South Seas” even though we all see the Pacific as an ocean west of the Americas

We have visited the Miraflores Locks (which are three of the 8 locks in the canal) and we have watched the big boys transit the locks. The Panamax ships (maximum size for the Panama Canal) squeeze into the 110 foot wide locks with less than 3 feet to spare on each side. Our own transit is still up in the air. We first need to decide when we would like to go through and then we have to go through some red tape to get measured and scheduled.

 

We are anxiously looking forward to exploring more of the Pacific Panama Islands, in particular the Las Perlas Islands which are just 40 miles from Panama. We are told that beautiful anchorages, white sand beaches, great fishing and good snorkeling are waiting for us in Las Perlas so we are delaying our canal transit until we have fully explored this side of the canal.

Fact: Assuming we do not change our minds and continue on to Ecuador we have passed our furthest point south on this trip at about 7° 10.100'N. We were about 430 miles from the Equator at that point.