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Several people have asked for a description of the canal and what happens during a transit. This amount of detail may bore many of you. If so, just skip it. Our next newletter will have a different slant, although no guarantees that it will be less boring. In our last newsletter, we told you we had been admeasured and were ready to schedule our transit date. A few days later we did a full transit aboard "Ailsa Jean", a Northsea 27, with the owners Patrick and Glenna, and Russ, another yachtie from the anchorage. It is required to have an minimun of four line handlers aboard. Along with the Panama Canal Advisor, it made a crowd on a 27 foot boat, especially as we expected to spend the night aboard anchored in Lake Gatun. The advisor came out on the Pilot Boat at 6:30 a.m., jumped aboard and we were off. We rafted against a tug through each of the three up locks, sharing them with a huge cruise ship in front of us, motored across Lake Gatun, taking the shortcut called the Banana Cut, which is only for small boats, and then rafted again against another tug for the three downlocks at Gatun, with a different cruise ship behind us. The decks of the cruise ships were lined with people taking photos and videos of us. Lake Gatun was formed when the Gatun dam blocked the river Chagras at the Atlantic Side. The valley was flooded making a very beautiful lake, with the high portions forming islands. The ship channel zig-zags across the lake to avoid the shallows around the islands, but the Banana Cut goes straight across. We saw lots of birds and monkeys in the trees as we motored very close to some of the islands. The Advisor, whose principal job was a tug boat captain, got a call to leave us overnight in the Lake and resume the next day, but he talked them out of it. We made it to the Panama Canal Yacht Club where we were very lucky to find a med moor tie to the dock at 6:30 p.m., and there the Advisor and the other crewmember left us. We stayed on Ailsa Jean to help get things straightened out and took the bus back to Alcyone the next morning. Altogether a great experience, with no problems at all. All went very smoothly, thanks in part to our great advisor, and to Patrick's skill in manouvering the boat. We were lucky to make it all the way in one day, exactly 12 hours. The big ships run 24 hours a day, but the little boats are allowed in the locks only during daylight hours. If you are familiar with the Hiram Chittenden locks at Seattle, the canal locks are very similar, except for the scale and the number in series. Like Seattle, they are parallel locks, east and west side, which operate independently. All locks are of identical size, 1000 ft. long, 110 ft. wide and 27 feet rise or fall, except for the first Miraflores locks which are 20 feet deeper to account for the Pacific tides. The Atlantic tides are only about 3 feet maximum. It takes 12 minutes to fill or empty a lock. Ships are pushed by tugs along the wall on one side before the entry to the lock and cables are hooked to the ship from locomotives that run on funicular tracks alongside. Cables are passed from locomotives on the other side by a small boat that is rowed, yes rowed, out to the ship. There are four or more locomotives on each side and they keep the ship centered, pull it through and brake it as required. It is all very coordinated and smooth. If there is room in the lock, the tugs accompany the ship, tying up behind it. If not, other tugs pick it up on the other side. Ships must have a Panama Canal Pilot and Line Handlers. Small boats are scheduled to share the lock with a ship and its tugs. Ships under 20,000 tons may not have tugs. Small boats can raft to a tug if it is available or may be center tied on four lines, two to a side. For this you have to have four 125 foot lines aboard, plus four 50 foot lines for tug rafting. Starting at the Pacific side, the canal runs north northwest. The Miraflores locks, two sets in series, are two miles from the Bridge of the Americas, which joins the continents split by the canal. You go into the first one, the gates behind you close, the lock fills, the gates in front open and you move straight into the next lock. The gates close behind you and when that lock is full you have gone up two "stairs" to exit into a small lake about a mile long and half a mile wide. This is called Miraflores Lake. At the end of the lake is single step pair of locks, called Pedro Miguel. Just to the east side of the locks, before you go through, is the Pedro Miguel Boat Club, where we are currently located. On the other side is the highest point of the canal, at 85 feet above mean sea level. For the next few miles is the Gaillard Cut, which opens up into Lake Gatun. The Gaillard Cut is where the canal cuts through the Continental Divide and was the most difficult excavation during construction of the canal. After crossing Gatun Lake, a distance of about 25 miles, or half the total distance, there are a set of three pairs of locks in series that step down to the Atlantic side. Three weeks ago we made our own transit through the Miraflores locks. Our friends Lori and Simon on "Native Dancer" and Debbie and Jay on "Mirage" came with us. Like Ailsa Jean we were scheduled to raft up to a tug. Our advisor, however, misunderstood where we were anchored and was waiting for us at Balboa while we were waiting for him, as instructed, two miles away at Flamenco anchorage. He called us on the radio and we met him at Balboa, but by then we were ten minutes behind our lock mate, a large freighter. They wouldn't wait for us and shut the gates. When the lock was clear, we went in all by ourselves. Since there was no tug, we were center tied, just like the big ships but with a lot more clearance on both sides. We came close to the wall, tied our long lines on the port side to lines to thrown to us from the top of the wall and on the starboard side tied our lines to lines handed to us by the men in the rowboat. We centered Alcyone in the lock, four canal employees hooked our lines over bits and our line handles took up the tension to keep us in the center as the lock filled. When the gates opened, we slacked the lines and the four employees walked with them as we motored into the next lock. We repeated the process, exited into the small lake and motored to the Boat Club. Again, all went smoothly with no problems. Yesterday, I was a line handler for "Gaia", a Morgan 38 from Pedro Miguel to Colon. It was another smooth transit, rafted to a tug in each lock. Because we couldn't share a lock with vessels carrying dangerous cargo, we had to wait more than two hours tied to a buoy before we could descend through the Gaturn locks. That made it a long day and I returned too late to enjoy the Saturday potluck here at the Boat Club. Someone said that I was getting to be a professional line handler, but I pointed out that professionals get paid to do that and I only did it to help out friends. We are not sure when we will complete our transit, but probably within two to four weeks, when we get all the boat work done. If you who would like to know a little more about the canal, try the web site www.pancanal.com/photo/camera-java.html. This page has a live camera that shows the Miraflores locks and updates the picture every three seconds. You can click to other pages to see other photos of the canal and some text about it. For those of you who would like to know a lot more about the canal, we recommend a book titled "The Path Between the Seas" by David McCullogh. It tells the story of how the French started the canal, why they failed and how the U.S. succeeded. Far from being dry, it is a real page turner. The author won a Pulitzer for it. Neither of us could put it down. I've rambled on for far too long, as usual. Next time we'll tell you about Carnival and some of the places we have visited here. Colin and Patricia, |
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