Panama Canal Crossing- Our time has come

January 9th! has finally come to transit through the Panama Canal.

A couple days before the transit, we welcomed our friends Jason, Ina, and John, who made themselves available to help as line-handlers. Their sacrifices and their help will have us be forever grateful to them.

The Panama Canal Authority requires four line-handlers for private vessels of our length.

We are excited to welcome them onboard for the experience, a once in a lifetime event for many, with us.

A quick, very quick lesson, for Ina and Jason about how to safely handle lines in locks was on the agenda two nights before. John, didn’t require any quick hands on lessons with lines as he is an experienced sailor himself and has passed through many locks on different vessels.

We were assigned a 0400 transit slot and were required to meet and board a Canal Advisor at "The Flats" anchorage to transit with us.

At 0200 we left the dock at Shelter Bay Marina for The Flats. We scheduled for a singgleday transit. There was to be no overnight in Gatun Lake, like is normally arranged. What an experience it was sure to be.

The transit day was a hot day, a really super hot day. We didn’t even have a light breeze. UGHHH!

When our Advisor arrived, we learned that he had an Advisor in training to accompany him. We were pleased to have the advisors aboard, but it meant a total of 8 people on our little boat for roughly 10 hours!

The first set of locks, Gatun Locks, was accomplisghed at daybreak. Mosquitoes and noseeums were brutal!! So far there are no reports of malaria.

Before entering the locks, The canal-side linehandlers throw us a ball-like weight, called a monkey fist, with a line attached. It can be a long throw!  You need to be very careful and alert because the monkey fist is very hard and can hurt someone badly. After the line reaches us, we attach it to our lines. We send one end of our lines to the lock wall where the canal line handlers walk them inside the chamber and secure the lines during the locking process.

The first throw by the canal handlers landed the ball in our rigging high up between the two masts which promptly entangled itself!🙄🥴 We were at risk to tangle the other end in our propeller. After several difficult tries, we untied the line and continued on.

After the triple chambers at Gatun Locks, we had risen approximately 85 feet to the level of Gatun Lake. Once inside the Lake, we dipped buckets into the water and cooled off with that fresh water. Nice! It was soooo hot!

During the lockages, we were rafted up with a catamaran. That means we tied together as a single unit and transited together. The crew of the catamaran hired line-handlers, so not much work for them.

We were proud to do all the line-handling ourselves as the outside boat, which was awesome!! It was straightforward and without drama.

After passing through Gatun Lake, we entered Culebra Reach and Culebra Cut. This was really interesting to see firsthand. This is the place where one landmass was cut in half to divide the two continents. We have an open question as to whether it was one single continent that was cut into two continents, or if it was always two continents divided by a natural isthmus.

Getting to go through these majestic locks with these humongous ships was something else!

At Miraflores Locks, on the Pacific side, we even made the webcam!

What an emotional event, going through the Panama Canal, and the longer than expected journey it had been to get to here! Awesome!

Check out our short YouTube video on the transit, and Cheers!!

Our adventures continue! Please stay tuned.

We’ll be headed to the Las Perlas islands to intentionally beach, also being called careening the Gem in order to scrape and clean the bottom!