RovingMind: Lord of Panamá, Good Morning! (transiting the Panama Canal)

The Canal from the Balboa Yacht Club, on the Pacific side.

For The Information Of All Hands:

It's taken a couple of weeks rooting around down here in the Canal Zone to hook up, but I finally have gotten my ride. Tomorrow morning, 1000 hrs. approx., I will be boarding the McPelican, a 42-foot sailing yacht of Australian registry, and will be transiting the Panama Canal. It'll take two days in all to get through, I'm told, and we'll moor somewhere along Lake Gatún for the night, about halfway through.

I'll be singing for my supper on this one, so to speak, as I'll be working on board as a line-handler. Each boat or yacht passing through needs a pilot and four line-handlers, one on each "quarter" (or two on each side) as per Canal Authority regs.

The bigger ships, including those called Panama-max as they are the maximum size that can fit into the locks, use a different system involving what they call "mules" (electric locomotives) for positioning and securing within the locks. But the smaller ones, such as ours, still use good ol' fashioned hand power.

At any rate, this is all very exciting and the event will be duly recorded with pics and maybe some videos, so stay tuned.

Hasta Luego to you all from this, the most famous shortcut in the world.

Yours,

"Panama Jim"

-- email that I sent out to various people Feb. 13 of this year, a Wednesday.

The next day, Valentine's Day, I banged in a taxi over a pot-holed road winding through jungle and palms, up to the remnants of a U.S. Army base, Fort Sherman. Most of its buildings had been stripped by scavengers -- an eerie ride-through, right out of the Twilight Zone, as generally only concrete hulks with roofs remain. It was though a great civilization had been there and left.

We cleared through a check station manned by Panamanian soldiers in digitized camo and with automatic rifles, eventually arriving at Shelter Bay Marina, along the steamy Caribbean Coast. After a brief search in blinding sunshine through the maze of slips, I found my boat -- the McPelican.

That's Paul, captain and co-owner, on deck. Note the tire bumpers along the side for "rafting up"with other yachts to go through locks.

Underway toward the canal entrance, Caribbean side. These ships are anchored, waiting to "transit" -- sometimes for a week or even two!


About to "raft up" with Shellback out of Long Beach, CA. Two or three yachts tie up into one unit and go through the locks together.

Rafted up to Shellback and a third yacht (out of sight) we creep into the Gatún locks. Note lock door, weighing 650 tons, at right.

It was trickier than I thought, especially when the locks flooded in with water. It comes rushing out of huge pipes and causes a roiling, swirling current which snaps the lines taut and wants to twirl boats against the concrete walls. This happens as warning bells clang, horns blare, seagulls and other birds flap about, and pilots and lock workers yell orders sometimes in two different languages.

Fortunately, Dillon and Sietst, two of the other line-handlers, had been through it all many times and showed me the ropes. Bernadette, one of the owners of the boat, was a nerve-case the whole time. McPelican was quite an investment for them and she was sweating any damage that might occur. She put that energy to positive use, though, down in the galley where she whipped up some delicious meals.

Manning the lines in the Pedro Miguel Lock. The towel on my head is protection from the blazing sun. Dillon takes shelter from it under the sail.


Up, up, up to Lake Gatún...That's three "lock-ups" at the Gatún Locks to get you up to lake level. This is the heart of the canal transit -- Lago de Gatún. Note lower level of channel off in background, with the Caribbean Sea beyond.

It took us two days to get through. What made it a true adventure was spending the night out on Lake Gatún, about eighty-five feet above ocean-level (that's what the locks do -- hoist us up to that level). All night the water was as calm and quiet as a puddle, even though the lake's 35 kilometers (21 miles) long, and the sky bristled with stars.

An hour before dawn howler monkeys started up from various points, working up to a crescendo of ape-like grunts; roosters crowed from jungle villages; and the smells of coffee and bacon wafted in from yachts and massive freighters anchored around us.

About 0530 a pilot boat revved up in the distance, then steered our way to distribute pilots and guides to the various vessels for the day's transits. One of the bulk carriers (freighters) was named simply the Lord, of Panamanian registry. As I lay in my bunk in the forecastle of the McPelican, looking up through an open hatchway at the sky turning pale, absorbing the ambiance of the whole thing, came booming through the radio, in a deep, full voice...

"LORD OF PANAMÁ, GOOD MORNING!"

Someone from the Canal Authority, an incoming pilot perhaps, was alerting the freighter Lord as to his arrival on board. I was jolted from my reverie, as if he had been talking to me directly. Laying there like that, I had been feeling like the Lord of the Universe myself!

Regardless, it was a wake-up call to all the sleepy yachtees in our group. On boats all around us, lights flicked on, hatches swung open, heads popped out...It was time to head across the lake and to lower, "to lock down," as they call it, on the other side to Pacific-level and thus complete the transit.

Our lock time at the Pedro Miquel Lock was 1140, so no time to linger -- miles to go and an appointment to keep. It was crank up the engines, take the guides on board, and away all boats.


Sunrise on Lake Gatún.

Meeting northbound traffic, as our little flotilla of yachts motors the lake.

We wait for this freighter to pass before rafting up with these two yachts on the port side.

"Lord of Panama," a bulk carrier, working its way through a lock. Note the two yachts tied together off to its right.

Now, a month-plus later, what stays with me the most about it all is the spectacle, especially on the Pacific-end. Viewing the famous Gaillard Cut, where the channel had to be dug and blasted out through the Continental Divide -- no Rocky Mountains here, but an imposing ridge line nonetheless -- I came to appreciate the mighty effort put forth to make this thing. And it was accomplished a hundred-and-some years ago! In the heat and the mosquitoes and with olden equipment yet. No wonder thousands died to the process.

The Gaillard Cut, with the Centennial Bridge in the background.

After descending the Miraflores Locks, the final obstacle to the Pacific, we putted silently along a miles-long corridor of exit buoys, everyone alone with his thoughts...

Right on cue, freighters heaped with a thousand-or-so containers apiece steamed in out of the haze and under the soaring arches of the Bridge of the Americas. They glided by a few hundred feet away -- pulsing, throbbing steel monsters. We had passed dozens of ships coming through, but these were the biggest, and both humbled and amazed us.


Crossroads of the world: Massive container ships steam in as traffic rushes overhead on the Bridge of the Americas, effectively connecting North to South America. What a sight! What a sense of x marks the spot!

Paul, our skipper, concentrates on the exit channel as another monster passes astern.

With this passage, in a sense, I feel that I was granted a visa to a very special place -- a watery realm that, given the population of the world overall, few get to enter.

The way I saw it, it's a domain unto itself, populated with nautical giants and nimble elves, with its own laws, customs and rules of the road, all presided over by a kingly authority...A place with its own lingo and mythology; its own tales of heroes, great feats, and great tragedy.

And yes, even a place of some magic: Watch as the stars come out over Lake Gatún or view the Centennial Bridge a-dazzle in brilliant sunshine and you'll know what I mean. Maybe you can tell, the place had me under its spell!

All told, I spent three weeks in the Canal Zone, based at a hostel that, during the American days there, used to house canal employees. I visited museums and visitor centers, watched ships pass daily from various shore points, frequented seafarer centers and clubs, browsed stores selling navigational supplies, talked with mariners and pilots.

As nice as these things were, I didn't really know what it was all about until I passed through on a boat. When I got underway on McPelican, I went from observer to participant in the experience that is the Panama Canal. Only then did I realize the energy, the real flow of this circuit between the seas. It's a place, perhaps like no other, where you can feel the very international pulse of the planet itself.

Thanks to Paul and Bernadette and their daughter Finn, as well as others, I now have one of my greatest of travel memories.