Up bright and early for our transit of the Panama Canal. We’ve just passed under the Bridge of the Americas.
Here are 3 of our line handlers-bright eyed and bushy-tailed.
This is Victor, our advisor. He was very nice and helpful too.
Outside the locks, these fellows in the rowboat attach the freighter’s cables to the cables going to the locomotives.
We don’t use the locomotives, just the large ships. We tie directly to the lock walls or side tie to another vessel.
We have found out that we are side tying to this small tug. Suits us perfectly.
The tug is way up in the lock and we are progressing towards it.
The side-tie crew doing their thing.
La Venta is the name of the little tug.
Once we were in, three VERY LARGE tugs came in behind.
Gives you some idea how large they are.
Gates closing behind the tugs.
Here’s the happy crew as the gates are closing.
Quite a lot of turbulence as the lock fills for up-locking.
Nearly there!
We untie from the small tug, and head out. Ralph turns a little too much broadside to the wind. With the strong wind, and a lot of turbulence as well, we almost lost it, but our 100 hp motor saved the day and brought our nose back into the wind! Unfortunately, no photos of the incident because we were too busy cleaning out our pants!!
This is the GPS position as we’re in the lock.
You can see, from the bow wake of the tug, there was a lot of turbulence to deal with.
Heading into the third lock, Pedro Miguel.
The “whities” from Canada lubing up!
Centennial bridge, just before the Culibra Cut.
They are doing a lot of work here to widen the Cut. They are also building a whole new set of locks that will take much larger vessels than the present ones.
Here, Victor shows us listed for the crossing on his list of vessels. There we are at the bottom of the list.
Sarah takes the wheel for awhile in the Cut.
Jeff just slacks off. It’s hard to get good crew!
Victor seems a little too relaxed too, don’t you think!
We were just about to reach the buoys in Gatun locks, for the overnight stay, when Victor heard we had to down-lock the same day. We weren’t happy about that as we were all tired and looking forward to the stay in the lake.
Greg trying to learn a few knots for the down-locking process! Ha, ha!! It is I who needs those sorts of lessons! Here we had to centre tie alone, so all line handlers were needed (not just two for tying to the tug).
Once you tie the monkey fist to our large lines aboard, we wait for the line handlers on the lock sides to call for us to send our lines.
They don’t look like they’re working all that hard, do they? But, it's much harder than it appears.
As we were down-locking, the weather took a turn for the worst with some rain and even more wind!
Greg trying to help me out since we were afraid my hand tendon problem would act up part-way through the job.
A large freighter came in behind us.
Victor in his rain gear as the freighter came in.
Gave Jeff a bit of a fright, apparently!
No, just foolin around!
Here the line handlers are finally at work.
Voila!!
The gates open to the Caribbean Sea!
Look out Caribbean, here we come!
These are our “flat-mates” as we anchor in the anchorage called the Flats, in Colon Harbour, to await a weather window to get to Kuna Yala, (the San Blas).
This stealth boat came into Colon Harbour the next morning.
Sunset over the Colon City Crane.
As we were leaving Colon Harbour, it was a bit unnerving to see this!
Weather in the Caribbean was not what we expected. Rain on the horizon.
Here are 3 of our line handlers-bright eyed and bushy-tailed.
This is Victor, our advisor. He was very nice and helpful too.
Outside the locks, these fellows in the rowboat attach the freighter’s cables to the cables going to the locomotives.
We don’t use the locomotives, just the large ships. We tie directly to the lock walls or side tie to another vessel.
We have found out that we are side tying to this small tug. Suits us perfectly.
The tug is way up in the lock and we are progressing towards it.
The side-tie crew doing their thing.
La Venta is the name of the little tug.
Once we were in, three VERY LARGE tugs came in behind.
Gives you some idea how large they are.
Gates closing behind the tugs.
Here’s the happy crew as the gates are closing.
Quite a lot of turbulence as the lock fills for up-locking.
Nearly there!
We untie from the small tug, and head out. Ralph turns a little too much broadside to the wind. With the strong wind, and a lot of turbulence as well, we almost lost it, but our 100 hp motor saved the day and brought our nose back into the wind! Unfortunately, no photos of the incident because we were too busy cleaning out our pants!!
This is the GPS position as we’re in the lock.
You can see, from the bow wake of the tug, there was a lot of turbulence to deal with.
Heading into the third lock, Pedro Miguel.
The “whities” from Canada lubing up!
Centennial bridge, just before the Culibra Cut.
They are doing a lot of work here to widen the Cut. They are also building a whole new set of locks that will take much larger vessels than the present ones.
Here, Victor shows us listed for the crossing on his list of vessels. There we are at the bottom of the list.
Sarah takes the wheel for awhile in the Cut.
Jeff just slacks off. It’s hard to get good crew!
Victor seems a little too relaxed too, don’t you think!
We were just about to reach the buoys in Gatun locks, for the overnight stay, when Victor heard we had to down-lock the same day. We weren’t happy about that as we were all tired and looking forward to the stay in the lake.
Greg trying to learn a few knots for the down-locking process! Ha, ha!! It is I who needs those sorts of lessons! Here we had to centre tie alone, so all line handlers were needed (not just two for tying to the tug).
Once you tie the monkey fist to our large lines aboard, we wait for the line handlers on the lock sides to call for us to send our lines.
They don’t look like they’re working all that hard, do they? But, it's much harder than it appears.
As we were down-locking, the weather took a turn for the worst with some rain and even more wind!
Greg trying to help me out since we were afraid my hand tendon problem would act up part-way through the job.
A large freighter came in behind us.
Victor in his rain gear as the freighter came in.
Gave Jeff a bit of a fright, apparently!
No, just foolin around!
Here the line handlers are finally at work.
Voila!!
The gates open to the Caribbean Sea!
Look out Caribbean, here we come!
These are our “flat-mates” as we anchor in the anchorage called the Flats, in Colon Harbour, to await a weather window to get to Kuna Yala, (the San Blas).
This stealth boat came into Colon Harbour the next morning.
Sunset over the Colon City Crane.
As we were leaving Colon Harbour, it was a bit unnerving to see this!
Weather in the Caribbean was not what we expected. Rain on the horizon.
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