Chapter 15: Crossing Panama.
Sunday January 27, 2019. Day #13. 7:01am.
Sunday started with putting together the small espresso pot. My next task was to turn on the VHF radio to listen to the canal control people talk to boats and pilots in Spanish. One by one freighters and tankers marched across the bay, a never ending procession of world commerce. The swarm of anchored sailboats and motor-yachts had grown, it sounded like there were thirty of us waiting to cross Panama. The Gatun locks were too far inland (eight miles) to see from Limon Bay. While my coffee water was heating I checked the bilge and the main DC volt meter. One of my biggest fears was lifting the floor panel to find the water level was just inches below the floor. The truth was Susan was very well made nearly 40 years ago, if it had a leak problem it would have shown up decades ago, but I still couldn't vanquish the fear, even with the bilge water/smoke alarm mounted near the motors.
At 7:42am I heard the whistle signals and told D&C to get ready, we had a long day ahead of us. I showed them the sun screen, the bug spray, the lifejackets, and how to raise the anchors. Lastly I went into the storage under a dinette bench and pulled out the required ropes for the locks and removed the stickers and tie wraps and had Dave carry one to the bow and tie one end to a cleat, Carly put the other one on the back deck and tied one end to the boat.
At 8:30am as one last ocean freighter sailed out of the canal towards the Caribbean a guy on a Jet-Ski with a bullhorn came by with orders how to proceed. One by one he started us moving from Limon Bay down the canal to the long seawall outside the first lock.
When it was our turn we pulled up both anchors, I asked them to be careful they did not damage the boat while lifting the anchors back on board. As soon as both of them had anchors in hand I started the electric motor and turned us around towards the canal. The guy with the bullhorn told me to stay behind 'them,' he said as he pointed to a sixty foot two masted sailboat anchored near us with a Korean flag on the back end.
At the point where the bay narrowed into a canal sat a very tall modern looking cable stayed bridge. It looked surreal with its white concrete frame, the towers were shaped like giant flames pointing towards Heaven. The very modern and expensive looking bridge looked odd sitting near a very old and worn looking Colon.
We were in a swarm of smaller boats, over half had sails. We motored south down the canal with green jungle covered hills on both sides as we sailed (seven miles) toward the first lock. For a time we used the sail to propel us down the five hundred foot wide manmade waterway, it felt (to me) like we were sailing back in time.
When Carly asked why I used sails instead of the DC motor I told her the batteries onboard were just barely big enough to take us all the way across Panama. She asked if I could run the engine instead, I said I could but we'd run out of diesel because the fuel tank was small. She replied with an, `Oh.' I told her that we'd make it just fine, I practiced this off the coast of Florida twice.
Sailing time from Limon Bay to the first locks was about 70 minutes.
A very long concrete pier extended out from between the locks, we were told to tie up along that pier and wait for instructions to proceed into the lock. Like the guy at the office said there were a bunch of guys standing there for hire as ropers.
It was interesting to see how many improvements had been made to the original 1914 construction. Monsoon season here lasted nine months of the year, I could see how difficult it could be to control a thousand foot long cargo ship, even with a tugboat at each end. They added enormous bumpers to protect corners at the entrance to the locks.
From the time we raised our anchors to the time we tied up to the long concrete wall almost ninety minutes had passed. We were fourth in line in our group. I think all three of us were tremendously excited, I saw it on their eyebrows.
Without notice the riveted iron plate doors (aprox. 70'x70'x7' each) began to move inward. The gates moved like stage curtains slowly parting, it looked very dramatic and made inside the lock appear almost like a painted stage backdrop, it was unlike anything I had ever seen before. They took about six minutes to fully retract into recesses in the tall concrete lock walls.
A man with a bullhorn walked along the wall above us shouting instructions to stay in order and slowly enter the locks all the way forward. Our group started to move and stayed near the wall until we were close enough to the far gates to see the rivets. When we actually entered the lock I asked Carly who was ten feet behind me to trade places with me briefly. I stood on the left gangway, held onto a mast cable and leaned way over the side to slide my hand across the big old iron lock gate and imagined I just touched the hull of the Titanic (they were all built around the same time). Our throttle was set as low as possible as we motored ahead at half mile an hour, about the speed I could crawl on my hands and knees.
Guys on the walls above us gave us hand signals and gestured for us to stop and throw two ropes up to handlers on top of the 100+ year old concrete walls. Carly and Dave handled the job perfectly. Then I grabbed another pier bumper and ran up front and hung another one on that side to keep us from scraping. Dave was focused on the rope and didn't notice Susan bumping against the wall. I should have hung one up there before we left Limon Bay, it was my fault but I didn't know which side we'd end up tied on.
Soon after everyone tied up to the wall, another line of boats moved in along the opposite wall until both were full, but there was sixty feet of open water down the center of the lock. We watched as the first set of gates slowly closed which was followed by strong turbulence in water below us as they flooded the lock with water from the next level up. Gatun Locks had three levels and the higher two had double doors facing the vast water supply of Gatun Lake. The water current in the center of the lock explained why they didn't set a line of boats down the middle too, because the current looked strong, all the boats needed to be tied securely along the walls.
While we slowly raised thirty feet I showed them how to hold the rope and run it through the cleat so we wouldn't break loose from the wall.
Moving up felt weird because it felt like we were moving but the lock walls looked like they were going down. Slowly, our view of the surrounding hills changed as we moved higher. Gatun Lake sat about eighty five feet above the Caribbean Sea. Eighty five divided by three locks meant we'd rise about thirty feet in each lock. There was not much difference between high and low tides on the Caribbean Sea, maybe six inches. But there was a difference of a few feet over on the Pacific side, but I had no idea why they were different.
Suddenly the turbulence stopped and the wall stopped moving, then the double iron gates in front of us slowly parted and another identical lock appeared. The same guy with a bull horn walked the wall above us shouting instructions, one by one our group moved forward into the lock and tied up to the wall again, exactly like the first lock. The process repeated the same as before.
Swirl, swirl, lift, lift, walls moved down, then calm. Gates opened slowly and we were moved carefully into the third lock. All the while our view of the surrounding hills improved, but now we could also see way down the valley over the canal out to Limon Bay, way behind us in the haze. This process seemed ancient and surreal. The entire thing was so neat and ancient it nearly made me cry. I thought about all the poor souls that died building this canal.
The double doors behind us slowly closed and we were raised the final thirty-some feet to the level of Gatun Lake. Once those doors were fully retracted we were allowed to sail freely onto the lake, one at a time. The entire view around us became: a vast lake with a waterway marked by two lines of buoys, a partly cloudy sky, and dense green jungle covered hills.
Once we cleared the lock area I asked Dave to crank up the main sail since we had a tail wind again. I knew our basic route to cross Gatun, it was programmed in my GPS (I programmed the entire trip into my GPS weeks before I left Florida). On my map it showed each turn on the route had a name too.
Sunday 11:45am local time.
Once we exited the locks and were on the lake it seemed like a switch was thrown and dark gray clouds started to gather above our group, but we kept sailing forward on wind power, it was breezy and we kept up about 4mph so I decided to turn on the motor and we got up to 7mph and caught up with the Korean sailboat ahead of us. I asked Dave to crank down the sail, we'd use the motor the rest of the way.
We saw heavy rain falling on the hills that surrounded the lake and the kids sat on the front edge of the cabin roof watching lightning strike the jungle over and over, but we heard no thunder. Our group of boats slowly spread apart as we sailed across the lake towards the mouth of the Chagres River and the town of Gamboa. The route was a gradual thirty five mile long curve to the left.
I pictured a scene from the movie Apocalypse Now when the crew of the Navy PBR was shot at with hundreds of toy arrows. I saw an occasional cluster of buildings near the lake but most of the shoreline was dense jungle, thicker than you could cross on foot. I've never seen such dense growth as I saw around the reservoir. I was also puzzled by the near total lack of pleasure boats on this enormous man-made lake. What was it about Gatun that kept the locals away? Or maybe all the fishermen were on parts we couldn't see from the main waterway.
The really odd part of crossing the locks was the difference between the world at sea level and up here on the lake. Once those last doors swung open it was like you sailed into a totally different world. In the locks it was like being back in time a hundred years ago, but once we sailed out of the third lock it was like we'd been teleported onto the Amazon River.
Colorful tropical birds cawed in the sky as I kept Susan about 200 feet behind the Korean sailboat in front of us. Sitting at the helm I got to watch the kids in front of me on the roof like two children at the zoo, pointing out things to each other.
When we were about ten miles across the lake the sky above us let loose a huge downpour. My GPS said we were moving about six miles an hour so it would take us most of the day to arrive at the next locks. I shouted to the kids to come to the back deck. They lowered two of the sides to keep us dry, but it seemed to increase the jungle heat. On the back deck it was like 98 degrees and 99 percent humidity.
The kids were spellbound by the scenery around us that I called a jungle and they called a rain forest. They were amazed by all the large colorful birds, monkeys in trees, and all sorts of weird critters on logs and tree limbs. They passed the binoculars back and forth to show each other something fantastic along the shore. Gatun Lake was like sailing across an enormous zoo except there were no barriers to stop the animals from attacking people. I didn't really feel safe and if just one of those lock doors failed this lake could drain rapidly and kill thousands of people. We'd only survive that if we could immediately beach the boat and jump onto land before Susan got sucked down the drain along with the rest of the boats and anything else not tightly tied down.
The thought crossed my mind, `...maybe this would be a really good education for them, and imagine the stories they could write. How many people could say they picked grapes at a famous winery and had sex with migrant farmers during the harvest for meals and rides across Argentina, sometimes in the back of old trucks loaded with sheep and Llama?' I'll think of them every time I saw a bottle of wine from Mendoza dated 2018, I should probably buy some for myself as a reminder.
Something told me when they wrote the book about this trip they'd leave out the part about the migrant farmer bon fires near Mendoza.
They stood on the back deck near me sharing the binoculars, watching the shore and waving at everyone they saw heading the other way. The weather changed rapidly on Gatun Lake we'd go from heavy rain to sunshine in a few minutes, then eventually back into heavy rain again. We motored for hours on battery power and even with solar and wind power running full blast I was still worried about running out of power before Naos Island.
Dave took off his shirt and Carly wiped him down with sun block. I wanted to do that for him but was afraid to offer. During a break in the rain Dave sat on the cabin roof with no shirt on and waved at people on boats headed the other way, it was enough to make me get a little hard. I wondered if his smooth flesh aroused Carly too. He raised his arm to wave, showed off the few hairs in his arm pit, and it stretched out his tit and really pushed the boner button in my brain. I had to look away and focus on keeping Susan in our lane on the waterway they had well marked with buoys like a highway across the lake.
At 5:05pm we saw a sign near the shoreline that said we were entering the Chagres River, which meant the Culebra Cut started a couple miles ahead. Once the lake ended and the river started the route took a gradual curve to the right, our task was still to follow the boat in front of us. There were no other major turns so there was no way to get lost now.
Before the canal was built the Chagres River used to drain the jungle and its immense annual rainfall. The river went down to sea level in a few places, one of the main branches went to the south towards the town of Gamboa, it curved around town and continued south and eventually ran into the ocean where Panama City is today. When they built the canal they had to dam all those routes to contain the water and flood the lake. The biggest dam was near Gatun and was also the hydro-electric station that powered the locks on both ends.
After 100 minutes on the Chagres River we approached the first locks on the Pacific side. The process was the same as before, we slowed to a crawl and held onto ladders built into the long concrete wall that stuck out ahead of the lock doors. The iron lock doors slowly opened and we entered the highest level and tied up to the wall on the left side. We could see far to the southwest and saw a partial view of the sun approaching the horizon. Street lights around the locks started to turn on. When the lights around the locks came on it was like daytime again, it was incredibly well lit. We also saw a crowded visitor platform up high on the north side where a huge crowd stood and watched us sail into the first of the two Pedro Miguel Locks, Dave waved at people watching the show.
We sat there waiting for almost half an hour for everyone in our group to tie-up then the back gates closed. As our group crossed Gatun Lake we sort of got separated so it took a while for the entire group to get back into place inside the highest lock.
Ten minutes later the water slowly started to lower and we watched the 100 year old concrete walls get higher as we lowered into something like a narrow concrete canyon. We heard people on other boats shouting jokes to other boats as we got lower, it looked like being lowered into a grave.
Eventually the currents settled and the double gates ahead of us slowly opened inward. Twenty minutes later we were tied up in the same configuration as the first lock. The water lowered and the gates opened and we sailed out onto a small lake with lots of local boat traffic running around. In the far lock up ahead I saw a container ship headed the other way was already being pulled into position in the lock by their small electric trains. It looked like the trains kept the boat centered in the lock but the ship pushed itself forward.
Staying on battery power we sailed across the lake following the boat in front of us, we sailed to the final locks and waited for our turn to enter. I asked Dave to go below and turn on the NAV lights. Now, the sky was a dark blue and I could see the first stars of the night. He brought the marine walkie talkie up to me at the helm and a cold bottle of water.
Eventually the gates opened and all of the boats in our group entered the final (Mira Flores) lock and tied up just like before. We waited for the entire group to arrive then the double iron gates behind us slowly closed and the water started to swirl and lower again. The walls moved up and the gates got taller.
Eventually everything became still and the last set of iron gates opened and the ride across the canal was over. We sailed out on battery power and headed towards the last man-made piece of land on our left side, the Naos Island Marina where I had a pre-paid reservation. They had a small beacon flashing on the roof of their building since the area was super crowded with boats and piers.
We arrived at 8:10pm after calling for a pier assignment on the radio.
The marina sat on a man-made pier that stuck way out into Panama Bay. We tied at the very end of the concrete and steel wall with a three foot climb up steel rungs to the top. After the ropes were checked I plugged us into shore power, city water, and went below to check the batteries. All eight batteries were hot and hissing under the stress of the large charger after being drained by the DC motor. I checked with the gravity ball tester and saw they were all down to 15% power and most cells needed water. I turned off every DC item and turned on two 117vac ceiling lamps and some fans (one of them aimed at the battery bank) and we started to make a shopping list. I sent Dave on foot to surveil our shopping/dining options because I was going to make a decent sized list.
When Dave ran back he stood on the pier and loudly told us what they had in the store (and another store a couple blocks further away), so I got him to climb on board. Carly held the notepad and we dictated a shopping list. They seemed so excited I thought they'd both explode before we could spend any money.
The list looked like this: Munchies, booze, wine, ice x3, meats, steaks, pots, beer, ice cream, fresh fish, other veggies, and a couple two liter bottles of Coke or Pepsi. I lifted the bottom of the sofa and pulled out the bag lady shopping cart and asked them, as part of our trade agreement to do the shopping, and if they wanted to take photos around the store and the marina. While they were gone I had some maintenance things to do. They agreed and I handed them $300 in US twenty dollar bills, but keep in mind we do not have a refrigerator but we did have a charcoal grille on board.
Contact the author: borischenaz gmail
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