Transiting the Panama Canal

Panama Canal Transit

By Suzy Carmody, s/v Distant Drummer

It was a bleary-eyed six o’clock in the morning and the sun was just brightening the Panama City skyline when s/v Mis Gale came along side s/v Distant Drummer to collect us for our Panama Canal adventure. My husband, Neil, and I had agreed to join our friends Gale and Slim as line handlers for their northward passage through the Canal from Balboa to Colon. We were keen to get some Canal experience before going through ourselves next year on board Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop.

We first met Mis Gale in July 2018 when we were anchored in Bahia Ballena in Golfo de Nicoya, Costa Rica. As we headed south, we had crossed paths with them

several times and were always happy to see Gale and Slim and share a few beers while swapping a few yarns. It was October 2018 when we caught up with them again in Vista Mar Marina in Panama and offered our services for the passage through the Canal.

Preparation

Full details of the documentation and procedures required to transit the Panama Canal can be found on the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) website, www.PanCanal. com/eng/. Many skippers choose to do the paperwork themselves, saying that it is not too onerous, but other

people prefer to use the services of an agent. The main advantages of an agent are that they help with completion and submission of all the documentation, provide a point of contact with the Canal authorities to help smooth the process, pay the buffer (a deposit which is refunded less any additional charges which may be incurred during the transit), and provide the fenders and mooring lines.

Before passing through the Canal, a vessel must be inspected, measured, and cleared by the Admeasurer, then a date for the transit will be allocated. Yachts less than 65 feet long are assigned an advisor by the ACP who boards the vessel early on the day of the transit. Small vessels use handlines to maintain their position in the locks. The ACP requires the boat to carry four mooring lines, each at least 125 feet long, and plenty of large fenders to prevent damaging the vessel against the lock wall. Four linehandlers are also required to be onboard in addition to the skipper.

Slim and Gale used an agent from the Panama Cruiser Connection (www.PanamaCruiserConnection.com). Roger was professional and efficient, very friendly and helpful, and seemed to have a good relationship with the ACP. He also provided transport around the city and was a fount of knowledge for anything we needed from laundry to solar panels to dinghy repair.

The day before the transit, Roger delivered the fenders and mooring lines to the dock at Las Brisas Anchorage and Slim hauled them aboard Mis Gale. Stephanie, Gale’s niece, and Andrew, a fellow cruiser, arrived from Houston, making up the third and fourth members of the line handling team. This was Gale and Slim’s third canal transit, and Andrew had been through several times before, so there was plenty of experience on board. The next morning when they came alongside Distant Drummer, Neil and I clambered aboard, ready for action and a cup of coffee.

Balboa and the Miraflores Locks As we left Las Brisas Anchorage and rounded Isla Flamenco, a 25-knot southwesterly wind was kicking up a choppy sea, causing Mis Gale to roll steeply in the swell. We called Flamenco Signal on VHF channel 12 to let them know we were in position at La Playita to pick up the advisor but told them that the conditions were not good for a the transfer. They verified that Mis Gale was on the list for transit that day and then instructed us to proceed up to the Balboa Yacht Club and wait there for the advisor to arrive. Luckily, once we were in the channel leading to the Balboa docks, the sea conditions were eased and Harold and Joe, our advisors, were able to climb safely on board and we settled in for the trip.

From the Balboa Yacht Club we passed under the Bridge of the Americas and through the Balboa Docks towards the Miraflores Locks, the first challenge to our line handling skills. We stuck closely to the red buoys marking the starbord side of the channel while tugs, pilot vessels, and other work boats were buzzing around us providing various services to the tankers and container ships moving in and out of the docks.

As we passed the entrance to the adjacent new third lock, we watched two tug boats nudging a massive tanker into the chamber like terriers nipping at the heels of a steer. Since the Panama Canal opened in 1914, the dimensions of the lock chambers have defined the maximum size of ocean-going cargo ships, a classification known as Panamax. In 2009, expansion of the Panama Canal began and a third lane of locks was opened in 2016. The new chambers are three times larger and the New- Panamax vessels have redefined huge.

Mis Gale was slated to transit the Miraflores Locks rafted up to a small passenger ship, m/v Pacific Queen. Our partner entered the chamber ahead of us and tied up on the righthand side of the lock. Slim navigated us into the lock; it was over 1000 feet long and took several minutes just to reach the front end of the chamber. We tied up to the port side of Pacific Queen with mooring lines forward and aft and two spring lines through a hawser on the starboard side. We stared at the dank green walls towering over us as the surface swirled and eddied and the chamber filled with water. As we rose we adjusted the lines as our advisor Harold instructed. In about ten minutes we were peeping over the top of the walls which had previously loomed above us.

The Miraflores Locks lift vessels 54 feet in two steps. First, we untied Mis Gale and backed away to allow the passenger ship to preceed us into the second chamber after the lock gates opened. Turbulence from the prop wash of large ships is one of the hazards for small yachts in the locks. Slim had to work hard to maintain position in the churning waters while Pacific Queen slowly pulled away from the sidewall and moved ahead. Then, once they had tied up, we repeated the process again under the eagle eye of Harold. We were now old hands.

The Pedro Miguel Lock is the third of the locks on the Pacific side of the Canal and lies about a mile upstream from Miraflores. It is interesting to note that at the Pedro Miguel Lock the bouyage reverses; for northbound vessels the American convention of “red right returning” changes to green to starboard above the lock.

Once again we rafted up to Pacific Queen, but this time on the left-hand side of the dock. This meant we had to shift all the mooring lines and fenders across to the port side on Mis Gale—the powers-that-be at the ACP must have been watching us on the cameras and thought we looked bored! We followed the same procedure and by lunch time we were through the locks leaving Panama City and the Pacific Ocean in our wake.

The rain started as we entered the Culebra Cut; October is one of the wettest months of the year in Panama. We crowded into the cockpit and enjoyed lunch while Harold entertained us with stories about Panama and the Canal. He was full of interesting facts and figures, and every so often he would throw out a “test question” to which we provided guestimated answers. Slowly, we became experts on Canal trivia.

The Culebra Cut, also known as the Gaillard Cut, is where the Panama Canal crosses the continental divide. It runs 7.4 nautical miles from the Pedro Miguel lock to a bend in the Chagres River where it joins Gatun Lake. The French began excavation of the Cut in 1881, but progress was hampered by landslides, disease, and financial troubles, and in 1904 the project was taken over by the United States. In total, ninety-million cubic metres of rock and soil were removed to lower the summit of the Culebra mountain range from 64 meters to 39 meters above sea level and create a channel 91 meters wide. Though thousands of men died during its construction, it was one of the greatest engineering feats of its time.

During the recent expansion, the Culebra Cut was widened to 192 meters. As we passed through the Cut we could see the step-sided man-made hills created from the debris from the excavation. With Harold guiding, Slim steered a course close to the right-hand side of the channel, almost touching the green buoys as we went by.

Even so, it still felt like a tight squeeze when enormous container ships or LNG tankers loomed out of the drizzle and passed us on the port side—they seemed very close.

The small town of Gamboa lies at the end of the Culebra Cut where the Chagres River flows into the Canal. This Canal Zone township was originally built to house the workers and their families and had a courthouse and a prison famous for being the location where Manuel Noriega was incarcerated after extradition from France. Today, Gamboa is the base of the dredging division of the Panama Canal and also home of the floating crane, “Herman the German.” The crane was seized by the Americans as part of war reparations after WWII, and in 1994 it was sold to the ACP for $1. It is still used in the Canal Zone for lock maintenance.

We passed Gamboa in the rain. As we entered Gatun Lake the drizzle turned into a downpour. All hands were in the cockpit wiping steam off the windows and peering through the deluge to spot the next green buoy which marked our path. Harold’s knowledge of the route was impressive; but, even so, when we reached buoy 55 the visibility was reduced to less than half a mile and it was impossible to find our track ahead. He advised Slim to hold Mis Gale in position as close to the buoy as possible until visibility improved. After a few minutesa, a work boat came by and we followed it out of the rainstorm until visibility improved and we were able to proceed.

It was four o’clock by the time we reached the top of the Gatun Locks and most of the northbound vessels had already gone through. There was no traffic waiting and the ACP does not let a small vessel go through alone, so we had to spend the night on the lake. Under Harold’s instruction we tied up to a large red buoy. Then he and Joe disembarked onto a pilot vessel, assuring us that an advisor would join us the following morning. His last words of advice were not to swim with the crocs!

The evening we spent on the Gatun Lake was very peaceful with not even a howler monkey to disturb the quiet serenity of the night. In the morning, several ships were waiting to enter the locks and we watched an enormous container ship dropping anchor beside us as we ate our breakfast. When Harold arrived he got us moving quick smart; a large cargo ship was waiting for us to go into the lock ahead of it. This time we were going to have a center tie, with the line handlers responsible for using the forward and aft lines to hold Mis Gale in position in the middle of the chamber.

We carefully coiled the four mooring lines, threaded each through a hawser, and tied a large bowline at the end—we were ready! Slim steered us past the Four Rigoletto, which towered over us as we rounded the bow and entered the lock. Once we were inside, the dock hands onshore threw monkey fists to us—we had to be careful they did not hit us on the head. We attached the messenger line through the bowline and then paid out the mooring line through the hawser as the dock hand pulled it in. The

dock hands walked the lines along the wall to the front of the chamber and secured the bowline around a bollard. We then eased the lines as Mis Gale descended.

Being located at the front of the chamber had several benefits, the main one being that Slim did not have to struggle with holding Mis Gale in position in the prop wash from Four Rigoletto as we moved between the chambers. In addition, it was a bright sunny day and the view over the lock gates of the Atlantic Bridge, Cristobal Harbor, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond was fantastic. The Gatun Locks have three chambers and each time the lock gates opened the breath-taking view was revealed again.

As we moved between the chambers, we pulled in the mooring lines with the messenger lines still attached. The dock hands held the messenger lines as they walked beside us through to the next lock then pulled the mooring lines ashore and secured them to a bollard again. We repeated the procedure twice more, then after we had descended the final chamber the messenger lines were released and we retrieved our mooring lines. Job done!

We bade a fond farewell to Harold as he stepped aboard the pilot vessel. He had been an excellent advisor and good company over the past two days. The final challenge for Slim was navigating Mis Gale across the flats of Cristobal Harbor into Shelter Bay Marina. The hulks of several vessels lying on the reef served as a warning not to try to shortcut between the locks and the breakwater. The entrance channel to the marina follows a path just south of the western arm of the breakwater and is marked by an occasional yellow buoy. The dockmaster guided us in on VHF 74 and was on the dock to welcome us and help us with our lines. In no time at all we were tied up. We relocated to the bar and celebrated our arrival in the Caribbean.

Transiting the Panama Canal in a small boat was an unforgetable experience. Initially I felt a little apprehensive, dwarfed by the size of the ships and the vastness of the locks; but we had a good skipper and a skillful advisor and I soon relaxed and enjoyed the trip. Throughout the journey I felt a strong sense of admiration for the courage and sacrifice of the men who had built the Canal and made the passage possible.