Oyster 56; Amanzi; Sailing from Shelter Bay through the Panama Canal into the Pacific January – Februari 2023

Sunday, January 29th, the Panama Canal

At 2pm we had to go to the anchorage area to wait for our advisor. That took another 2.5 hours…. Why this planning was not clear to anyone but anyway, around 6pm we motored, in the dark, into the first lock, the Gatun lock.

Just before entering the lock, we made a raft of three boats. Amanzi on bb of Far and Mistral on sb. In 3 stages we went up 27m. I was on the bow. That meant I was thrown a monkeyfist I had to tie to the loop of the 40m line we had been given. Together with Clare, I would operate this line. Michiel and Fleur from Pippin who would help us as line handlers managed the sternline. Mistral was given the lines from the others.

Then we went in as the first nest all the way to the gates on the other side of the lock. There the long lines were thrown around the bollards and we had to park our nest neatly in the middle of the lock. Three more nests followed behind us. When all 12 boats were properly moored, the doors closed and the water soon came. In less than 5 minutes, we were up the first 9m. This process repeated itself two times and then we were able to sail onto Gatun Lake.

There, the search for the mooring buoy began. The locks were well lit, if not on the lake. Except for the lights of lots of buoys and ships at anchor. Fortunately, our advisor knew exactly where we needed to go. Once there, four boats had to tie up on one buoy. Which, by the way, was a huge buoy you could just stand on. Far and us went on either side of the buoy. Mistral came alongside us and Renegade came alongside Far.

Meanwhile, it was 9pm. Soon after all 12 boats were moored that way at 3 buoys, a pilot boat came to pick up all the advisors from all the boats. The next morning around 8am they would come back on board.

The night was a little bit unsettled. Around 3am we were woken up by Phil from Far. Our boats had shifted slightly from the buoy between us due to the wind and waves from passing boats, our both bows were touching. After some maneuvering and lashing, we were well again.

The next morning, all advisors were dropped off again only less than half an hour later than agreed. We untied all the boats and motored in convoy, first across the lake and then through the canal to the Pedro Miguel and Mira Flores locks.

It was an impressive trip that took just under five hours. Via the main channel you sail straight through the jungle. On the map I had also seen another channel, the Banana channel. That one is much narrower and I had thought we would take that route. I had read stories about it where crocodiles swam around the boat, parrots flew overhead and monkeys could be seen and especially heard.  However, that canal had not been maintained for years and thus was not used for transits anymore. Only small boats still used that route. We sailed up with the huge ocean giants that passed us at sometimes mere 10 metres.