Panama Canal Transit on SV Varuna!!

After saying goodbye to Skeeter and Shiraz, Jerry, myself and Sam from SV Windfall rowed over to the dock at Land and Sea to catch our bus to Panama.  We caught the 6:40am bus and arrived at the boarder around 8am.  After checking out of Costa Rica and into Panama we then headed across the boarder and caught the 10am bus to Panama City.  Here in Panama they do not call it Panama City, it is just Panama to the locals, so kind of confussing to us tourist, but we made it.  The bus stopped around 3pm (mountain time) in Santiago for lunch break, which had a eatry and a couple of tiendas.  The prices of the food was great, so much cheaper than Costa Rica has been. 

Now me being the prepard one I am (sometimes), I packed lunch for Jerry, Sam and myself, so we were not hungry.  After a half an hour break and buying a couple more sodas for the road we headed back onto the bus.  After another hour on the bus, we could tell that it was having some problems, they kept pulling over every 30 or 40 minutes, we think that the bus was overheating a little.  Then after about another hour or so they turned off the airconditioning and pulled over to have us all get off and get on another bus for the remainder of the trip.  The second bus was even nicer than the first bus, with airconditioning, bigger seats, and they showed a movie.  We finally arrived at the Grand Bus Terminal around 7pm, once stepping off the bus we saw that this bus station was bigger than some of the airports in the United States. 

We got an eight dollar taxi ride to Las Brisas anchorage where Mitch and Anne on SV Varuna were anchored.  The next morning we started motoring out of the anchorage around 6 am to head toward the canal enterance where we would pick up our advisor to take us through the locks.  They ended up pushing back our time to go through the canal till 8:30 am, so after our advisor came on board we had some breakfast that Anne had prepared ahead of time. 

The pilot boat that has our advisor on it!

The bridge entering the Panama Canal

To give a little history on the Panama Canal it was built in 1914, it stretches for 80 km form Panama City on the Pacific side to Colon on the Atlantic side, the canal cuts right through the Continental Divide.  Nearlly 14,000 vessels pass through the canal each year, which ships carrying up to 4000 containers were built world wide to fit throught the canal.  In 2014 a new canal will be completed to allow the much bigger ships carrying up to 10,000 containers to cross through.  The cost of crossing is according to their weight and length, the highest amount was around $200,000 US in 2001 by the 90,000-ton french cruise ship and the lowest was about $0.36 US in 1928 by Richard Halliburton who swam though.  SV Varuna cost about $650 US with a $900 deposit that they will get back in a couple of months.  The canal has three sets of double locks: Miraflores and Pedro Miguel Lockes on the Pacific side and Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side.  Between the locks we pass through and artificial lake, Lago Gatun, created by the Gatun Dam across the Rio Charges, and the Gaillard Cut, a 14km cut through the rock and shale of the isthmian mountains. For more in depth about the canal go to http://www.eclipse.co.uk/~sl5763/panama.htm

We entered the first lock around 8:30 am on Friday and after tying to a tug on our port side we waited for the water to fill up the first lock, then released from the tug and motored into the second lock.  We did this three more times till we were through the first three locks.

Entering the first lock

Evan our advisor helping tie to the tug

"Mule" -the ships have these to help lead them through the locks.  Some ships have up to 8 mules guiding them.

The sight of the new canal locks, that will be able to take much much larger ships!

We got throught the final lock on the Pacific side around 10:45 am, to go through the Gatun Lake took us over 4 hours and the last ship going throught the Gatun Locks to the Carribian left at 1:30pm.  It started to poor down rain as we were motoring throught the lake, but it was still a beautiful site, we ended up having to tie up to a mooring buoy and stay the night and go throught the locks in the morning.  After the pilot boat came and picked up Evan our advisor we had some cocktails and dinner and went to bed after along day. 

Entering Gailard Cut!

Where a lot of the canal work boats would come speeding by and make a large wake.

"Ted's Island"- Our very large mooring buoy

The next morning we were supposed to get our new advisor around 9 am, but in true form he did not come till 11:30am.  Once on board we were off to go through our final three locks.  Now these locks we enter and wait for the water to drain out of the canal called "down locking".  Once entering the lock we were tied up with a sportfishing boat and then we had our starboard lines up to the line handlers, while the fishing boat had their port lines out.  We cleated them off, and as the water was let our, we let out more line to keep us steady with the lowering water.  When the water was out, we released the lines and the fishing boat motored us to the second and third lock. 

Sam inspecting on how we tied up to the sportfishing boat.

These are our line handlers up on top ot the lock!

As you can see we have a large car carrier and a tug behind us

watching the water lower out of the locks

The lock in front of us with the cargo ship...we are almost to the Carribien!!

The gates from the down locks opening!

We exited the final lock around 1:45pm, released ourselves from the sportfishing boat, dropped off our advisor and motored out of the canal channel to Shelter Bay marina.  This is a great marina, with all the amenities where most boats go after the canal to get ready to go cruising the carribian.  Unfrotuently it was really overcast and windy, so I was not able to get any good pictures out into the Carribian.
That evening we all enjoyed a good meal and cocktails up at the marina along with Gordon and Jayne from SV Comfort Zone 2.  The next morning Jerry, Sam and myself took a taxi back to Panama City to explore the city before getting on our 10:40pm express bus back to David Panama.  We had a great time walking down by the malacon and the flamingo yacht club and of coarse going into some marine stores.  We then took a taxi back to the bus terminal and across the street was Albrook mall, since we had many hours to kill we had some lunch, walked around and even saw a movie ( "Horrible Bosses" a must see). 

The beautiful malecon in Panama City

Jerry and Sam enjoying a beer in Panama City

What a view (yes it was hazy), overlooking Las Brises Anchorage toward downtown Panama (know as the American Zone)!

what a boat!

We got on our long bus ride back to David, arriving around 4:45am.  Again having some time to spare we got some coffee and waited till sunrise to start walking around David.  Jerry was getting a new but used SSB from Arturo around 8:00am Yeah!!  Now all we have to do is to get it working...more on that later.

After doing some grocery shopping and getting the radio we got back on the bus to Golfito.  After all the barking and meowing from Skeeter and Shiraz ( they were letting us know they do not like us leaving them), we were going to get ready to go out to dinner, and in true form it started to poor down rain.