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We arrived at the Panama Canal Yacht Club on Saturday morning. The yacht club is in Colon in the middle of an industrial area surrounded by containers. It is rather run down but friendly and the restaurant serves good, inexpensive food. There was a colony of feral cats living behind the restaurant, cleaver cats. Jim and Nancy went to a 7th day Adventist church just outside the marina, with lay speakers rather than a minister, speaking in English. They received a very warm welcome. At the yacht club we met another British boat called Blue Dawn. They were transiting on Sunday 4th. After a call to our agent Peter Stevens, we moved our transit to the 4th as well.
Our transit was scheduled for Sunday evening. We were to be anchored at the Flats by 6pm, where our advisor would join us at 6.30pm. We didn't need a pilot because we are less than 65 feet long. The lines, which we were renting arrived in the afternoon, four 120 foot ropes, so we were all set to leave. The advisor didn't arrive until 7.45 pm and we proceeded to Gatun lock. There was yet another hours delay at the lock but we finally went in behind a big freighter and a tug. Blue Dawn was rafted against the tug and we were at the back in the centre of the lock. We needed all four lines, Jack and Carole took the stern lines while Jim, Nancy and I did the bow. William was required to be on the helm at all time.The line handlers threw us a thin line with a monkeys fist knot on the end to weight it. We attached this to our lines and they pulled our lines up, attaching them to cleats at the top. The lock gates closed and water began to come in. We had to keep our lines tight by taking up the slack as the lock filled. There was a lot of turbulence, so this was important to make sure the boat did not touch the side of the lock. Gatun lock has three chambers, rising a total of 85 feet to the level of the fresh water lake Gatun. It took about half an hour per chamber. The lines remained attached and the line handlers walked with them from chamber to chamber. We came out of the last lock into Gatun lake and tied up against a huge rubber buoy for the night. Our adviser left us here. We had fun attaching to the buoy since it was so big. Nancy tried to hook it with the boat hook which was very funny. In the end Jack stepped across onto it and looped a bow and stern line round it. It had been home to a colony of sea birds which we had evicted, however they left the most awful mess and stench of guano behind.
Next morning our adviser arrived at 8.45 am and we continued our transit. He took us through a narrow short cut, called Banana Cut. The scenery was lovely and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has a research centre where this joins the main channel off the Barro Colorado island. There was lots of dredging and widening going on. We Passed through the Gaillard cut, which was the most difficult part of the canal to make, having been blasted from solid rock. This was where many of the 27,500 people died building the canal. We arrived at the Pedro Miguel lock at 12.30pm. Our advisor recommended we transit against the wall as the decent is much more gentle and we would only require two line handlers to let out the ropes as we went down. There was only us and Blue Dawn, I was amazed that they operated the locks just for us, as it takes 26.7 million gallons of water per lock. The water is supplied by rain water collected in the man made Gatun lake and everything operates by gravity. We then crossed the mile long Miraflores lake and entered the final two chambered Miraflores lock. On exiting the canal we went to Balboa Yacht Club but there were no buoys available, so we went to the anchorage at Playita.
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