Salsa has successfully transited the Panama Canal, and is now anchored in the Playita anchorage, Panama City Panama. The plan is to stay here for about one more week and then head off for a few days in the Las Perlas Islands about 40 miles off the Panama Coast, then head on to Galapagos, hopefully arriving there around mid March, departing Galapagos late March, arriving in French Marquises around May 1. Then Island hopping across the South Pacific hopefully arriving somewhere around Brisbane Australia sometime around November this year before the start of the cyclone season.

This year, at least at this early stage of the season for cruising boats transiting East to West through the Panama Canal (did you know that technically you exit the Canal on the Pacific Side further EAST than the entrance on the Atlantic Side, The canal actually runs more or less SE/NW). Anyway, the good news is that this year so far there seems to be only a few days wait to get through the canal, in either direction really.

If you want more info on transiting the Panama Canal you can look back to my old blog post; (PANAMA CANAL TRANSIT BASICS AND FEES: 5/29/2008). The information there is about the same. The fee to transit this year 2009 including getting measured is about $620, the buffer fee (deposit) is about $800, only big change from last year is that you have to pay the transit fee in CASH, that you can get from an ATM here in Colon if you don’t have it, the deposit can still be paid on a credit card but if I remember correctly they only take VISA, they only put a hold on the $800, and then take the hold off some time after your transit, that is assuming you don’t use an agent who takes care of the buffer for you and all the paperwork for a fee of around $300. If you want to know your other good options to avoid the Agent’s fee read my old blog mentioned above. OOPS, one big change I just leaned. The Panama Canal Yacht Club is NO MORE. Apparently they failed to renew a lease or something and they literally got bulldozed down with about one hour notice to the occupants and employees that happened just a few days ago. Boats in slips there were given a 2 month notice to evacuate and as far as I can tell, cruising boats in Colon Panama will have to use the expensive Shelter Bay Marina or work out other methods of getting ashore.

Wow I digress; I wanted to write about SALSA’S transit! And I think I still can’t report about the transit without first going back to my ATTEMPTED transit from last year. To sum up the first half of 2008, it was a mad rush to get through the Panama Canal in time to cross the Pacific before the cyclone season. This rush got me to Colon Panama on April 2nd, reasonably early enough in the season. However I had NO IDEA that there would be an unprecedented two month delay or waiting period for sailboats. I opted to wait it out and finally relax for the first time in almost a year. There were a lot of boats waiting as well and plenty of partying to be done. The smartest people chose to wait the time in the San Blas Islands of Panama, one of the nicest cruising grounds I’ve ever seen, and probably some of the best fishing in the Caribbean. Anyway, after waiting in Colon Panama for 2 months, on my transit date, my fuel injection pump died. I lost my entire buffer, the transit fee, had to fork out around a $1500 to get the engine right, and was told that the next date I could transit would be JULY, a bit late in the season for a small slow boat to cross the Pacific. All of those events lead to a wonderful, yet brutally expensive detour including a total of three months in Colon, two months in San Blas, three months in Cartagena Colombia, and one month in Panama City, now leaving me ready to cross the Pacific plenty early in this years season.

I have to say I felt a lot better about the transit this year. My engine was in better shape, I had personally transited the canal 9 TIMES on other boats, and I had Four expert line handlers reserved well in advance that also happened to be good friends, what could go wrong!? In truth, not much did, yet there were a few moments of despair and panic that turned out OK.

Upon arriving in Colon Panama, I was told I only had to wait a few days to transit even though several mix-ups with the agent and the measurement people took over a week to work out. This didn’t really matter since I wanted to transit roughly two weeks after my arrival in Colon, so I wasn’t actually delayed and most other boats were able to get a transit arranged within 4 or 5 days of arriving in Colon. I honestly believe the hardest part of transiting the Canal, especially for a single hander on a small boat, is arranging to feed and accommodate so many people during the transit! We are talking about sleeping five people, and feeding 6 People for nearly 24 hours, not to mention beer, booze, snacks, etc. Plus, if you’re like most people and REALLY appreciate your friends or fellow cruisers line handling to help you out, and saving you nearly $400 in fees for professional line handlers, then you ought to take good care of them! That should include beds for all of your crew even if you end up sleeping in the cockpit, the best food you can reasonably provide, and a 24 hour open bar :-), and that’s just how we did it on Salsa.

On February Friday the13th, 2009 we were scheduled to have an advisor board our boat around 5PM. He actually arrived closer to 7PM, which was nice giving me plenty of time to stow the dinghy, anchors, etc. He arrived and told us to wait another hour or so till 8PM-ish since our lock time was delayed an hour. We took this time to eat dinner that Erika from Two Captains picked up for us from a Chinese restaurant. Once we got under way for the for the five mile or so commute to the locks it was still slow going, which is the norm in my experience. They had us idle slow, turn around, go back, not actually rafting up into a group of thee boats and entering the locks until closer to 9 or 10 PM. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary happened but we did have some hiccups. The center boat a large Catamaran appeared to not be able to shift his port motor into reverse without physically accessing the engine gearbox. Since it seems that he never bothered to let the advisors/pilots in on this information, every time they asked him to use reverse (which was a LOT, and IMPORTANT if you don’t want to slam a boat into the walls of the locks) The captain would casually LEAVE THE HELM during the urgent maneuver, go below, switch the gear box to reverse, then re-emerge at the helm, never seeming to notice the chain of other problems not stopping or reversing earlier created, but hey, I see stuff like this all the time in the locks and as long as nothing gets damaged nobody seems to care much. I won’t go into details about other line handlers that didn’t really understand the basics of “handling a line” that put boats unnecessarily close to the walls again, these incompetent people are always the same ones not listening to the instructions of the advisors, saying “I know what I’m doing” (when the exact opposite is the case). Gee, I hope I don’t sound like I’m ranting, but it gets even worse.

The funny thing about transiting the locks in a three boat raft up is that usually the two outside boats handle all the lines and the larger center boat deals with the engine and rudder to help keep every one in position. This means that everyone is responsible for everyone else’s boat safety and not so much their own. For example if the Center boat makes a steering error that results in a collision it is almost always going to be one of the smaller boats tied to him that hits the wall with sever damage, larger boats sometimes jokingly refer to the smaller boats as “fenders”. If you look at my pictures from the Canal you can see some photos of boats rafted and you can see what I mean. Also, if for example the Port boat fails to secure a line from the wall to their boat, this would likely put the Starboard boat on the wall. So what happens to us, something I’ve never seen in my 9 previous transits on other boats, is the boat opposite us actually breaks a cleat. Thus, loosing control of the starboard stern lock line. This puts Salsa very close to the wall, something that the Catamaran in the middle could have compensated for had they been able to put there port motor in reverse and rev forward on the starboard. But as mentioned before they didn’t have this type of control. The end result was Salsa getting VERY close, only a few feet from the wall. My expert line handling crew did manage to get a fender and a tire to the likely point of impact very quickly, even though this effort would have likely been in vane had we made contact. When you raft three boats together such as they do when you transit the canal, the collective weight of the boats is around 40 tons or so (salsa is only around 5 tons), SO the weight of 40 tons smashing Salsa on the wall would likely have caused serious damage fenders or no fenders. Luckily there was no contact. That particular time the water was released into the lock VERY quickly, faster than what seemed normal. It caused turbulence and currents in the water that are hard to imagine but I think we have one or two decent videos of it if you click on the link to my photos and look around.

Well that’s about it for the “exciting” parts of transiting the canal. I’m very happy to report that the motor ran perfectly the whole time, we were able to do just over 5kts through Lake Gatun on Friday. And arrived at the Mira Flores locks on the Pacific side just in time for our lockage. Motoring across Lake Gatun is somewhat uneventful but a welcome change of scenery. It’s a huge man-made fresh water lake that more or less bisects North and South America. While they don’t recommend swimming in the lake due to its alligator population, I personally highly recommend you take a dip while no ones watching, very refreshing. And at the very least you can bucket yourself down with the first unlimited supply of fresh water I’ve had in nearly a year, you can even bucket down your crew when they aren’t looking! It was also very cool to know that friends and family were able to watch us live from the Panama Canal web cam, we have those photos uploaded here as well. One day I’ll figure out how to insert photos here in the blog but till then you have to go to the home page and click on the photos link and look at the different folders.

Most people finish their Atlantic to Pacific Canal Transit around 2pm the day after they start, spending one night in the Lake. We were no exception and once you finish the last lock you can either stop at the Balboa Yacht Club, or go a few miles past it to the Playita Anchorage where I am now. Well I’m sure there’s a lot more to tell about the transit but rather than bore people I leave it at but and feel free to ask questions if you have any. I figure I have around a week to go here in Panama before I head towards Galapagos, so Ill try to get in another update or two, only problem is I’m having a hard time getting an internet connection in this area, and I prefer not to tote the laptop into Panama City if it can be avoided. I understand there is internet available in Galapagos so you can expect an update when I arrive there sometime mid March or so if you don’t get one sooner.

Filed under: sailing • Trip

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