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Bulletin - 28 March 2001 |
| " We are now in the Pacific! |
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We spent a few days in Colon, stocking up with food and drink to last us at least till Tahiti, the next main victualling opportunity, and then a few more, waiting in the Canal queue for our turn. The tensions which must always exist when a small boat passes in very close proximity to large ships, in large locks moving millions of gallons of water in a very short time, were exacerbated for us, both by the accident just after we arrived, and by the apparently chaotic nature of the queue, which meant that yachts’ transits were postponed or suddenly brought forward at the last moment. |
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Although in most cases people do not need them all, in order to make the transit every yacht has to have on board four 125 foot thick mooring lines and four line handlers, as well as the skipper and a pilot from the Canal Authority. The transit can take one or two days and the date is confirmed only the day before you go, so the logistics of borrowing or hiring lines and organising line handlers, who (generally fellow yachtsmen) are themselves trying to organise their own transits makes it all a bit fraught. We had offered to go as line handlers for Just Magic, which was due to transit before us. They were originally offered Sunday, then it was changed to Monday. Capers was due to go on Sunday too, but they were not even re-scheduled for Monday. We were in the cockpit ready to be picked up by Just Magic at 0500, when they called across to say that they had been postponed. A transit advisor had gone sick. (All boats, even yachts, have to have a Panama Canal “pilot” to take them through. Yachts have trainee tug captains as their “transit advisors”). No yachts were to transit on Tuesday (too many full-sized Panamax ships, or ships with dangerous cargos), so Just Magic was re-scheduled for Wednesday, our original transit date, which by then had been put back to Friday or Saturday. This time, on Wednesday, we went, and had a smooth and very fast transit with three boats rafted together in the centre of the canal (Just Magic in the middle) and were through the canal by early afternoon. We learnt a lot from the experience and saw a number of pitfalls and potential problem areas, which we hoped would help us be better prepared. We arrived back in Colon to ring the scheduling office and be told we were now “on” for Friday, so had to ask our line handlers Barry and Annette of Just Magic to do a fast turnaround and get the bus back to Colon to stay with us on Thursday night, as we were given a 0415 start! We also employed a local, experienced line handler (Rudi) as our fourth, as we had decided it would be helpful to have a Spanish speaker on board, acting on our behalf. By now the results of the enquiry into the accident had emerged. The two yachts were tied up to a tug on one side of the canal behind a ship. One of the tug’s crew, who should have been keeping their stern line tight was missing. The tug swung round towards the ship as the lock filled, with the yachts between it and the ship. The tug captain was not at his post, he was asleep below, subsequently claiming in mitigation that he had been on duty for 15 hours without relief. When he came to, he pressed the wrong button in his cockpit, which forced the tug and yachts harder into the ship, rather than away from it. |
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So when we heard that we were to transit with another British yacht, the catamaran Skive, both tied to a tug, which had been recommended to us by other yachtsmen previously as the safest option, we had rather mixed feelings. In the event, we had an excellent transit advisor, Ernesto, who was a friend of the tug captain, who had in any case just passed his exams, so was very much on the ball, so we had a trouble free passage up through the locks, despite the considerable turbulence caused by the ship ahead of us turning her propeller to move from one lock to the next. The view back down the locks was quite something, with the ships to follow queuing up below us. |
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The Gatun lake (formed when the Canal was built by the damming of the river Chagres) in the middle of the canal is very beautiful, and we passed close to islands with monkeys and bright green parrots in the trees, though we didn’t see any of the freshwater crocodiles which live in the lake.. |
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The advisor told us that if we could make good speed, we should be able to keep up with the ship we had locked up with, and would therefore be able to complete the transit in one day. So we unfurled the foresail to give us extra speed, took a short cut and managed to keep within a respectable distance of our ship,
Petersfield. Fortunately it had to slow down, as the final “cut” before the down locks is too narrow to allow two ships to pass, so we were able to overtake it – an unusual sensation for us overtake a tanker underway
! – and then remain ahead of it, as yachts lock down in front of the ships. At this point, for some reason, we were separated from Skive, and went alongside another tug ourselves, with a small Panama Canal Commission launch tied alongside us in turn. Going down is less subject to turbulence than going up, and we had a smooth ride down and out of the Pedro Miguel lock. Our pilot then asked us to go alongside the wall in the next lock, which we had not wanted to do – the walls are quite rough – but the tug was not going on through, and the launch was smaller than us, so, given that the passage down seemed more manageable, John agreed. Annette and Helen were posted on the side deck with poles to keep us well away from the walls as we descended with Rudi and Barry controlling the lines fore and aft and, again, all went off smoothly through the last two locks
. We later heard that Skive had not been so fortunate, and, coming through a couple of lockings later, had been caught by the force of the ship behind driving the water forward combined with the current, found themselves going sideways into the next lock with the engines in full reverse, and had had a hard time regaining control to moor to their tug in the last lock. Fortunately, despite giving them all a scare, no damage was done. |
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We were through the final lock and motoring into the Pacific by 1420, just had time for a hasty lunch before the pilot left us, dropped Rudi off at the Balboa Yacht Club and were then finally able to relax a little and enjoy the transit in retrospect as we sailed gently down to the anchorage off Flamenco Island, with a spectacular view towards the skyscrapers of Panama City. (After so much beautiful scenery, one can appreciate a high rise skyline - from a distance!) |
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