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| Stop..........pretty please ? |
So, our ambitious plans call for getting to French Polynesia. Visions of Tahiti, Bora-Bora, and tropical islands are now dancing through our heads. We conveniently block out the small issue of a 30-day non-stop sail from Panama City to the Marquesas. But the first issue...L'ORIENT needs to change oceans. We've enjoyed the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea for 9 years now. But faced with the choice of sailing around Cape Horn or paying $2,100 to transit the Panama Canal, we did what most sane people do and signed up for our transit.
Because of the luck of the schedule, we were NOT nested in the locks with similarly sized sailboats. Instead, as no sailboats had requested January 20 as a transit day, our lock-mate was decidedly bigger. Not sure he even noticed us as we were constantly about 30 feet from becoming fiberglass kindling.
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| Goodbye Caribbean... |
The concept seemed deceptively simple. Go in the lock, close the gate, fill/drain the lock, and as they say in this part of the world........"Todo Bien" (it's all good). Pictured below are the all important blue ropes and rope "catchers" - the line handlers. To avoid collision, spinning out of control, or crashing into a lock door and paralyzing world commerce (bet the fine for that is unaffordable) there are no fewer than four line handlers on each sailboat. They catch and tie lines in each corner of your boat and send the lines up to other handlers on the sides of the lock. Your boat is thus suspended in the lock. This is a complex ballet of guys yelling at each other in rapid fire Spanish and throwing lines at each other.
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| Two of our team, ready for action |
L'ORIENT's crack-team of hired guns........line handlers at the ready as we approach the lock. Glad we weren't trying to do this ourselves. The canal passage involves an overnight and the line handlers sleep on board. This violates the L'ORIENT rule of usually no more than one genetically related guest on board at a time, but safety for the cost of only the 10 lbs of Kirstin's jambalaya they ate seemed a good investment.
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| Safe after day 1; we tie up in Gatun lake overnight |
At the end of the first day, 3 of the canal's 6 chambers have been traversed (but only 1 of the 3 locks). We moor against a big buoy in Gatun Lake. Our team of line handlers devours Kirstin's Jambalaya as though they've never eaten before. Their English is spotty, but "is there any more" suddenly becomes their favorite phrase in English. And like all millennials, they spend the evening on their phones.
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| Strategy conference with Julio, our canal advisor |
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| Our first glimpse of the new lock-mate. He barely fits. |
As day two dawns, we continue across the lake. In addition to the line handlers, we are joined for the transit by an "advisor". He is mostly concerned with preventing egregious mistakes by the line handlers or us. For instance, who knew that you had to pull over for ships carrying liquid natural gas (you do.)?
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| More scary lock neighbors. Steel tugboats with like 10,000 hp engines. Their prop wash could blow us into the next area code. |
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| Screen shots from the Gatun lock "canal cam". L'ORIENT looking quite modest next to some large freighters |
Day 2 was more of the same. We were wedged ahead of a big, black freighter and behind a tour boat. Obviously, there was no space cushion available. Controlling the boat was tricky before the lines were secure as the inflow/outflow of water pushed us around a bit. As we had just waxed the boat, a collision would have been a cosmetic (and life threatening) disaster !
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| Entering Pedro Miguel lock - feeling all alone for now |
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| L'ORIENT 30 ft ahead of the freighter, who in our opinion is obnoxiously close to us |
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| Nervous moments as he gets closer and closer in Miraflores |
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| The last lock..........get me out of here !!! Check out the number of tourists watching from the yellow building |
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| Herb, feeling like his advanced age might carry more weight with the freighter captain (it didn't) |
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| Herb contemplating his last time through the canal.......on a Holland America liner. Culebra Cut. |
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| Day 1 in the Pacific........Panama Canal literally behind us |
So, we made it and promptly moored again.......this time in the Pacific. The lights of the Canal in the background provided an interesting backdrop.
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| Welcome to the Pacific - 20 foot tides. Fishing Dock, Panama City. Not pictured.......the ocean. |
We're excited..........a whole new world awaits us behind these doors. We're now in a marina (still in Panama) awaiting a weather window for our 4,200 mile 30 day non-stop sail to the Marquesas in French Polynesia. We're aiming to be underway in the middle of February. We have some groceries to get! We will see.
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| Hello Pacific!! |
