Crossing Continents to the Pacific

Our transit from Atlantic to Pacific was scheduled for Tuesday the 21st of Feb at 2pm. Unfortunately the Shelter Bay shipyard had not relaunched Tin Tin on Saturday, while we were doing my trial run through the canal. So on Monday morning it was extremely upsetting to find that they had another boat scheduled and couldn't fit us in. Plus their crane driver hasn't turned up to work till 1pm!

However I stressed to the office manager lady that we were originally scheduled to transit on Monday at 3pm.  She didn't hear the "originally" and got everyone on the job so that amazingly the painting was finished and the boat in the water by 2pm. That gave us time to collect the repaired sails, fill with water, hose off the dust etc. We had also had the help of Pierric Bages, a very helpful French electrician, trying to sort out issues with loss of battery power, and he worked up to the last moment investigating the problem before we left.

Tin Tin's new blue antifouling is finished in the nick of time

We motored over to anchor at The Flats to wait for our Adviser/ Pilot and by 5pm were rafted up with another yacht and entering the first of the three lock Gatun series. Ahead we had a cargo vessel and a large motor boat. Our team took one pair of lines, while our companion boat took the port side pair.

Under the guidance of our Pilot we motored into each lock, and here the onshore line handlers threw down lines weighted with a heavy metal/rope "Monkey's Fist" to which we secured our 50 metre lines with a big bowline.  The line handlers then hauled our lines up while we manoeuvred into the lock, close behind the ships ahead, and they then secured us to bollards.

Japanese Car Carrier, Garnet Ace very close astern in Miraflores Lock, Panama

We watched in awed anxiety as a huge cargo ship slid in behind us with inches to spare on each side of the lock, and came to a stop within a few feet of our stern.   Their lines are all handled by four diesel locomotives which run on rails alongside the dock, with a mechanism that stops them toppling into the lock. The rail tracks slope steeply up from one level to the next, so the locomotives run on a rack and pinion system like a funicular railway.

In the locks on the Panama Canal

As the water in the lock fills or empties the yacht crews had to work hard to take up the slack, whilst maintaining tension round a cleat, to keep the rafted boats from colliding with the wall or the cargo ship astern.  The swirls and eddies are powerful as the vast tank fills up quickly.

By the time we had reached the top lock it was pitch black, and we motored quickly to the designated mooring buoys. Here our Pilot left us for the night, and we settle down to supper and a well earned cold beer.   We took a chance and used red paint and Niall's stencil to emblazon TIN TIN ROUND THE WORLD onto the faded red buoy, hoping we wouldn't get arrested. However at breakfast it was obvious that no one was likely to spot our red on red graffiti!

The next day got off to a slow start as our new Pilot, Omar, didn't arrive till about 10:30 and then we only motored at about 5-6 knots all the way, overtaking large vessels that all seemed to have to wait till critical bends in the channel were clear of boats heading north.

Crossing the American continents through Panama Canal and Gatun Lake

As we motored out through the last lock we saw a crocodile in the water!

It was 5pm when we eventually picked up the last available mooring at Balboa Yacht Club, and handed our lines and fenders to the boatman with the required $12 fee. Once we'd got ourselves sorted we got ferried ashore by the Club boat to the pontoon at the end of a long bridge to the shore. The plastic thatched bar of the Yacht Club soon delivered supper and cold drinks before we headed back to sleep, content that we were safely through this momentous crossing of the continent.