It was time to leave the Caribbean Sea and and take the extraordinary journey through to the Pacific Ocean. Carved through one of the narrowest and lowest saddles of the long, mountainous isthmus that joins the North and South American Continents, the Panama Canal is an incredible feat of engineering and it’s only now having gone through it that I can truly appreciate the extent of its greatness. Completed in 1914, having taken decades in the making and planning and costing tens of thousands of lives due to harsh climatic conditions and the resultant diseases which took a hold of workers of such, yellow fever and malaria spreading like wildfire. This was no mean feat, by any stretch of the imagination, to join together two of the worlds largest oceans and with it unfathomable loss of life.
Before going through the Canal, we needed to hire sufficiently strong and long enough mooring lines to hold Tin Tin under heavy strain and big fenders to protect her against the lock walls and big tankers - heaven forbid! We also were required to welcome a Pilot on board for the whole transit to guide us through the canal - they take this transit business very seriously! We have to wait 3 hours on the flats just inside the Cristobal Breakwater before we receive our Pilot, named Hector. He hops aboard effortlessly from the pilot boat and assumes his control over our vessel. Even Skipper Papa Paul must now answer to him! He then tells us we will be rafting up next to a neighbouring wooden yacht named Arc en Ciel which is bigger than us. Papa is to be helmsman at all times and Hector gives him the directions to follow the buoys along until we reach the locks. We raft up with the other boat just before and meet our new neighbours for the transit.
The skipper is an old American guy called Harry who is sailing around with his 12 year old son and they have recruited 3 kids from Shelter Bay to be the line -handlers for the transit, who are also American and very charming. We go through the first 3 locks on the Atlantic side called the Gatún Locks and here we are raised a total of 26m progressively. we share the lock rafted up with our new American friends on Arc en Ciel and in front of us is a huge Reefer and a sports fishing boat. It is really quite surreal to experience the locks filling up. We are thrown lines from the sides with little weighted balls called monkey fists attached to help land them on the boat, we then have to attach and loop our lines through them and the line handlers on shore pull them back to the dock once we’ve secured them round the cleat. We then keep the tension and take up the slack as we rise with the water. We’ve got starboard lines to deal with whilst Arc en Ciel attend to the Port lines. Its quite nerve-racking as the currents can be really strong inside the lock and you do not want to loose control! The final gates open up to Gatún lake just as the sun is setting. Here we find a huge red mooring buoy so big it’s almost half the size of Tin Tin and we anchor up for the night. Hector, our Pilot is done for the day and is collected by Pilot boat to go home to bed… I did wander where he would sleep on Tin Tin…?!
We sleep lolling in Gatún Lake to the sound of distant Howler Monkeys and think of the crocodiles lurking in the shallows. The next morning we rise bright and early at 6.30am for a 7am departure for our next part of the journey. Despite our early get up, our new Pilot, Omar doesn’t arrive till 9am and we are impatient to get going. We slowly make our way up the canal towards the last set of locks on the Pacific side which seems to take all day. We only can go about 6 knots and have to stay behind Arc en Ciel because apparently the Pilot on her is calling the shots today and we have to time it so that we all get to the locks at the same time as our mother ship - a huge Cargo who is behind us. The Canal is windy as we cut through the thick lush jungle of Panama. We spot a croc bathing lazily on the shore line.
We raft up again with Arc en Ciel and soon we reach the Mira Flores Locks which is another set of three and this time we have to prepare for the locks to empty, slacking off the lines as we descend. First we wait of your big companion to enter behind us and i’m not exaggerating when i say that this beast of a boat completely dwarfs us! She comes up behind us terrifyingly close. A Japanese Cargo ship, on its way back to port, has just a couple of feet clear either side of the Canal. It is incredible how precise these big ships have been designed to fit perfectly within these locks. We hear that there is a webcam just above the visitor centre so have told a few people to look out for us. One of the young American line handlers who is slightly bonkers but brilliant decides to moon the tourists at the visitor centre and the webcam, much to our amusement. Looking back to the webcam footage, there is a great image of Tin Tin and her neighbour being towered over by this giant vessel and we look quite tiny!
The last lock eventually empties out and the golden gates open to reveal the Pacific Ocean, we made it! The Pacific welcomes us with a heavenly breeze and we glide out into the salt water once again and detach the lines from our adjoining friends and say goodbye to Arc en Ciel. Towards us we see the famous Bridge of the Americas joining the North to South America. Omar leaves us and is collected by a Pilot boat waiting for him, and we find our anchorage for the first time in the Paciifc just off Balboa Yacht Club, on the outskirts of Panama City. We see the sunsetting behind the famous bridge and think of how far we have come and what the next leg of our voyage will bring us. To have crossed from one ocean to the next, wow!
Balboa yacht Club is fairly basic but there is a free water taxi service and the bar does good food and we are starving! We then go in search for the showers - well in need of a good wash! The shower block is policed by armed guards which makes us wonder how safe an area we are in..? Anyway it is a welcome shower, if a little dingy… the lights don't really work and the door won’t lock, and so i just have to trust the guards don’t decide to have a peak inside. I take my chances and am grateful to feel clean again!
We sleep well that night despite the constant traffic of ships through the night. The next day is a rest day although Papa goes in search of new batteries as it seems as our old ones aren’t working sufficiently anymore. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t involved myself in these technical issues on Tin Tin. There seem enough men on board with a thirst for fixing things that I’ve taken a step back (I hate to be the stereotype but I'll admit my lack of interest) It turns out that the batteries Papa picked up which were so heavy to get on board were in fact too tall to fit under the floor boards and so the next day we all make the trip to find new ones without much success. Also, we learn that because of Carnival coming up at the end of the week, nothing is going to be open…. It looks like we’ll be hanging around Panama for a lot longer than we'd anticipated. We say goodbye to Steve who catches his flight back to London that afternoon. He’s been such an amazing help getting us through the canal and a great advisory to Papa with all the electrical problems Tin Tin has been experiencing. Thanks Steve!
It’s about time we did a big shop to stock up on food supplies as we need to start thinking of provisions that will last us over the next 3 months as we cross the Ocean to The Galapagos and Marquesas where we won’t come across much in the way of convenience stores, and if we do they’re bound to be mega expensive. We get a taxi to a big shopping Mall call El Rey and get to work on our Supermarket Sweep - the bill comes to a ridiculous sum of $780 I’ve never seen a receipt so long. We need to take two cabs back in order to get us plus shopping back to the boat and then a huge trolley to take us down to the water taxi. We spend the rest of the afternoon storing it away in cupboards around the boat in some sort of logical order. I have to hand it to Justin on being super organised and making an inventory of everything as we went along.
We pootle around the corner that evening to find a new anchorage that won’t cost us as much and as the sun is setting we have the extraordinary sight of hundreds of Pelicans dive bombing into the water to catch their evening meal. I’ve never seen anything like it. The sea must be bubbling with fish as i’ve never seen such a feeding frenzy of birds. Amazing!
We spend the next few days in this anchorage just off La Playita, exploring the Old Town of Casco Viejo and enjoying the next few days of Carnival experiencing the Parade and water festival along the main Corniche in the city. At least we are entertained whilst we wait for things to reopen again so we can sort battery problems and find an electrician because now (shock-horror) the engine won’t work, which means we won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
I’m on a personal mission to find a paddle board to buy as I think it would be a great way to explore the islets we’ll be coming across in the Pacific. Hopefully I’ll be able to find one here in the City but I’m yet to convince the others that there is room on Tin Tin (there definitely is)…watch this space!
To pass the last day of carnival, we escape the city and get a ferry to the neighbouring island of La Taboga, once a sanitary Island used for quarantining the diseased canal workers, one of which was Paul Gauguin. Because it is Carnival however, the ferries are jam - packed and we have to be there an hour early to ensure a space. Families from the city have come out with huge picnics and umbrellas and are ready to fiesta on the beach. The crossing takes an hour and the island itself is pretty unspectacular and very spoilt due to the mass of tourism and pollution from the city. The water is so littered, even I can’t bring myself to go for a swim although it is scorchio and everyone else seems quite happy to splash around in it! I am however, grateful for a day relaxing on the beach and pay $5 for a lounger and umbrella - it is way too hot to be out in the sun! The men want to climb to the top of the hill which is about an hours hike but it is midday and I chose to watch the world go by and people watch - one of my favourite past times. I also scrub up on my Spanish and speak to some children playing ball after which it hits me on the head whilst I’m reading resulting in a lot of giggles. I also negotiate a very fine piece of Creole fried fish with rice and peas. I meet los hombres back at the ferry port and find them drenched in sweat and hardly able to talk from climbing the hill in the middle of this hot day! I’m quietly happy of my choice of activity for the day. We return back to the mainland on a rammed boat where we are obliged to wear hot grubby life jackets and with only space for half a bottom on your seat, it is quite an unpleasant ride! I’m realising how spoilt I am to be able to cruise in the luxury of one’s own boat…must not take it for granted! It’s good to be back home on board Tin Tin.
Night night,
Panda
xxx
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