Canal Transit Trial Run

This weekend I was invited to be temporary crew on s/v Songline – a Lagoon 410 catamaran from Australia – by Phil and his wife Kristina. This was a great opportunity to go through a canal transit and learn what the experience is like before we take Tahina through on Tuesday. The process takes about 24 hours including a layover at anchor in the lake between the locks. It turns out that if you have a catamaran, they often will raft a mono-hull sailboat on either side of you and the line handlers from those boats take the lines from short for holding position in the locks. This means the line handlers on the catamaran have an easier job – so, I was free to take lots of photos! Also on board were Oscar and Graciela of s/v Zenitude.

You can read an overview of the canal at WIkipedia, which has a very interesting past and was the largest human engineering project of its time. The canal has three locks on the Atlantic side near Colón, Panama called the Gatun Locks. And there are three locks on the Pacific side near Panama City called the Miraflores Locks. There is a large man-made lake with a ship channel which was carved through the many miles causing a liquid continental divide between North and South America. Panama is in the process of building new wider and larger locks and widening the ship channel in order to let even larger ships get through the canal. It is at least a 10 year project.

We started on Saturday afternoon by motoring to an anchorage near Colón to await instructions. Pilot “advistors” are brought out to each boat from the Canal Authority who give instructions to the skippers and crew on what to do while navigating and going through the canal. We were sheduled to meet at 2:30, but half the boats had to wait until 6:30 for the advisors to arrive. Our small fleet of only 6 boats went through the three Gatun locks at night. We were pleasantly surprised there weren’t more boats – or ships – going in the same lock with us. Therefore, we had plenty of room in the locks. We motored to an area near the locks and then the two mono-hulls motored to Songline and we exchanged lines to raft together. Each boat had plenty of fenders to make sure we were shielded from one another.

Next we motored into the locks. Lines from ashore were tossed to the boats on each side and their line handlers tied them and adjusted them as the locks were raised. The water in the lake is higher because due to a dam, and the canal uses this water to drive the entire process by generating electricity and using the water to fill and lower the locks. On the Atlantic side each lock has water added to raise the vessels about 30 feet. The process takes about 20-30 minutes for each lock. We were through the three locks by about 10 PM and dropped our anchor in the lake.

The next morning, a new advisor arrived by launch at about 6:15 and we were soon motoring in the misty dawn air through the lake. The area is all tropical forest jungle, so there were many interesting trees, birds, and animals to see. The clouds and mist made for some interesting scenery, but made photography a little more difficult. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to spot any alligator/crocodiles, or even monkeys. Most of the time we were at least 100 meters from the islands and land.

Once through the lake, we arrived at the Miraflores locks around lunch-time. We again rafted up with two boats and went through the similar process only the locks lower the water and the vessels. The canal authority has web cams at each of the locks and at the Panama Centennial Bridge – the only bridge over the canal between the locks. There is another bridge near Panama City. If you watch when Tahina is going through, you might be able to see us live going through the canal! We’ll update you with the approximate times when we get them later today. The father of a young man on a boat called “William T. Parquette” on the same transit sent me an E-mail with a web cam shot he took which shows Songline on the left. I took some photos of his boat during the transit. Look for the web cam shot in the photo album below at the end of the slideshow.

I took a number of 360 panoramas during the passage through the locks. It will take me a few days to get them processed. I also took a lot of static fish-eye lens shots with the same camera which I’m including in this gallery. Later I will warp the distortion of these shots so they look like very wide “normal” photos. But, you’ll get an idea of how things looked from the photos as they are. I’ll also be uploading other photos from another camera. But, I’ll be very busy today preparing for the transit so I’m releasing the first batch now as they are (and while I have an Internet connection). Enjoy!