The path Between the Seas

Grainy webcam of ITIKI, Illimite and Mai Tai in the Gatun locks

The Panama Canal, the path between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a channel between the North and South American continents. A marvel of “modern” engineering and a real thrill to have the opportunity to transit in our own yacht!

​We left Shelter Bay Marina with an air of nervous anticipation, we were well prepared and had an experienced crew on board but an 11th hour hiccup almost put an end to our well planned transit. Read on to find out what happened in that gut wrenching moment.

The Path Between the Seas

A bit about the Panama Canal

The Panama Canal opened in 1915, having been built and initially managed by the USA, who basically had sovereignty over the canal and several miles either side of it. It has remained almost continuously operating since then. From 1977 to 1997 the management of the canal was progressively handed over to the Panamanian government. Panama used to be a province of Columbia, but peacefully seceded in the early 1900s in order to secure American support for completion and management of the Panama Canal. Panama remains a neutral country with only defensive forces, which given the significance of the canal is a crucial point. Ships from any country can go through the canal - we learn that an Iranian naval vessel transited the week before us.

Canal in profile

Lake water fills lock to lift boat

Side by side locks allow 2 way traffic

​The Panama Canal provides important access for shipping between the west and east coasts of America and of course between Europe and Asia with ships able to transit in both directions. It is the prime source of income for Panama, and because of the canal Panama is a key International shipping hub, connecting North and South America. There is continuous maintenance going on to ensure the canal operates smoothly 24/7 and major works are always in progress to add more locks, widen the narrow parts of the canal (including the Gaillard Cut) and further increase the capacity of the Canal.

Miaflores locks, Pacific side

For ITIKI the Canal is the last physical barrier between us and our “backyard” of the Pacific Ocean. For any cruiser the transit of the canal is a big deal, exciting and a little daunting at the same time, with of course some bureaucracy and logistics to get through. We chose to use a canal Agent, Erick Galvez of Centenanrio, to smooth our way through this process and we are glad we did. It takes the stress and work out of figuring out the system, making payments, scheduling and dealing with Spanish speaking officials. The Agents know the system and know how to work with it, although they certainly can't control everything.

Here are your fenders!

Every yacht that goes through the canal needs to have 4 sets of heavy mooring lines to use to attach to the lock walls. Large fenders are also required and both lines and fenders can be rented from the canal agent. We also need to have 4 line-handlers on board. There is a great network of cruisers around Shelter Bay area who are ready and willing to “pay it forward” and do a transit ahead of their own to help out others. We were fortunate to have new friends and fellow cruisers as “line handlers” to help us out as well as sharing the adventure. A big shout out to Tad and Robyn of SV Bisou, fellow Helia 44 owners who line-handled for us, and had already done it once before. Also to Morrie, our crew for the leg to Galapagos, who had also transited on another yacht. It seems Keith and I the only “Canal virgins” on this trip. We were also delighted to have our well chosen boat buddies - Ollie and the team on Mai Tai (a Lagoon 40) coming through the Canal with us. This turned out to be a very good choice of transit companion, but more on that later.

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Getting Ready

The transit process starts with a boat being measured. After leaving Guna Yala we stopped into Shelter Bay Marina which is located at the entrance to the Port of Colon, the gateway to the Panama Canal. Our Agent has organised a time slot for ITIKI to be officially measured. Whilst it is possible to be measured in The (New) Flats Anchorage, its much easier for the busy admeasurer to just walk along the dock to the next boat. The process itself as simple as there are only two size categories: < 65’ and > 65’ and as a 44’ cat we easily inside the first category. The admeasurer outlines the transit process and provide some good advice for the skipper. We will have an advisor on board who will sit with the skipper, and work with the advisors on the other yachts in the ‘raft up’ as well as the Canal operators to get us through safely. Once measured, we book a transit for 14 February via our agent, along with our boat buddy Mai Tai.

Our ticket to ride!

Off to Bocos

With those boxes ticked we have some time to head west to Bocos de Toro for a few days, and return with plenty of time for our transit.
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We had some "throttle issues" we discovered on our way back from Bocos. We were confident these were now fixed and the engines were working well. Keith also had change the oil filters with Ollie before we left for Bocos and the engines had been starting and running smoothly for over a week now. A few days before our transit date we were back in Shelter Bay Marina, feeling pretty relaxed, when I got a message from our agent saying that our transit date was moved forward by one day! It would now be on 13 February - unlucky for some but fortunately we are not superstitious…

But now we had to get our skates on! I spent the day cooking up a couple of evening meals which would give me more time as we went through the Canal. The advisors expect “proper meals” and rumours abound about unhappy advises calling out for Uber eats at Skipper’s expense if he doesn’t like what’s on offer. Our agent even provided some pictures of what proper meals look like! I think I was more stressed about this than any other aspects of our transit. I also have our line handlers and crew to feed for two days.

Our Canal Adviser Guillaime stepping aboard

The Big Day Has Come

And so the moment has arrived. There are three yachts going through today, two cats and a mono. Cristobal station called us on channel 12 to confirm we should head out to The Flats (Anchorage) and wait for the advisor who would step on board at 2:30 pm. So off we go, we anchor and wait, it’s blowing 20 kn and its not the nicest of anchorages but the advisor, Guillame, is on time and with some great manoeuvrings from the pilot boat he jumps aboard. Gentlemen, start your engines…

Then it comes....  The "OMG that’s all we need” moment…
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We are about to transit THE PANAMA CANAL, busiest shipping channel in the world and the @#@$%& STARBOARD ENGINE WOULD NOT START!

It spluttered and coughed but would just not catch. Keith quickly started the port one and that was fine. After our “double trouble” with the throttles, that was a relief. We try to stay calm in front of the advisor and I quickly messaged Ollie our boat buddy. At this point we were quite sure that the advisor would pull the pin on our transit. Having a mechanical problem transiting the Panama Canal would have a knock on effect for the other vessels and screw up their all important schedules. Fines would also be issued and deposits lost and we would have to start the process again, join the back of the queue! We played it down as much as we could… “yeah bubbles in a few lines will work their way through” … act casual it’s no big deal… We quickly upped anchor and got going and as we were making reasonable speed with one engine, the advisor seems happy to continue. Perhaps he also had his mind on that “proper” meal. Phew!

We liaise with Ollie from Mai Tai who as luck would have it is an amazing, highly experienced “engine mechanic to the stars” with the blood of of McGyver in his veins! What a great choice of boat buddy! Meanwhile the advisors confer and we agree that as our Port engine is working fine we will be the port side of the yacht raft. The mono will be in the middle and Mai Tai will be on the Starboard side.
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We’ll head off separately towards the Canal entrance passing under the Gatun Bridge, which looks a little like the ANZAC Bridge in Sydney. In front of the entrance to the first set of locks we start to form the raft. Mai Tai and the mono join first but they struggle with a strong beam-on wind. Once they straighten up we can join them but the professional line handlers on the mono make a meal of it and we copped a nasty scratch in our gelcoat.

Into the Gatun Locks

Finally we are moving as one and heading towards the first lock. Yachts enter the first set of locks behind a freighter and our lock buddy is already in place. Freighters don’t use their engines to move them through the locks. They are towed through by locomotives on rails on either side of the locks lateral walls. This means that there is no prop wash for the boats behind them. There is barely enough room for a fender between the side of the freighter and the walls. Panamax class ships are built to fit exactly in the Panama Canal with no space wasted.

Keep away from those walls!

The linesman on the shore throw us the messenger lines. These are lightweight hemp lines that have weighted monkey fists on the ends, and land on the foredeck (eventually). Our heavy mooring lines, supplied by our agent, are already in place and we attach them to the messenger lines so they can be pulled up by the linesmen and placed on cleats high above us on the lock wall. And then the gates close behind us. The water level starts to rise and our line handlers gently take up the slack on our lines, keeping the raft centred in the lock. Although we have plenty of fenders out, we really don’t want to bounce off those nasty looking concrete walls!

Action man!

Ollie at the helm of Mai Tai

As soon as the gates of the first lock close Ollie springs into action, hops across the mono and onto ITIKI, clutching a length of fuel line and with a gleam of confident determination in his eye. The clock is ticking… With the calm air of an ER surgeon, Ollie directs Keith to place a jerrycan in the engine bay, find a cable tie and a weight that will fit through the opening of the jerrycan. Keith watches in awe as Ollie adeptly McGyvers up a system to take fuel directly out of the jerrycan into the engine, bypassing the fuel filters, which are the suspected cause of the problem. Meanwhile the line handlers, Morrie, Tad and Robyn do their stuff while I try to keep the advisor amused and distracted in the skipper’s absence. The water level rises in the lock, which takes about 15 minutes. Keith fires up the Starboard engine and voila! It works like a charm! In the blink of an eye Ollie is back to Mai Tai in time to drive the raft to the next lock. Clever man!

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Once the lock is full and we have reached the top, the gates open into the next lock. We are to follow the freighter in front of us and the instructions from our advisor. The shore linesman lower our mooring lines to us. We hold the messenger lines gently as we motor through to the next lock, whilst they walk along the wall beside us, holding the other ends. When we are in position they take the mooring lines upwards again to the high lock wall and cleat them off again. The gates close behind us and up we go again. There are essentially two boats in each lock, the freighter and our yacht-raft. If we weren’t here there would probably be two small freighters, so they are probably not making as much money from this transit as they could be.

Stand clear, doors closing

The advisors on each of the boats don’t seem to be communicating very well and the coordination of the raft process and the movements from lock to lock is left to the skippers. The advisor on the middle boat should be taking the lead, but we are not even sure we know which guy is their advisor. At one stage Mai Tai gets a bit too close to the starboard of wall and is struggling to drive the raft to port. We only have a port engine on which doesn’t help matters. Our line handlers try to compensate by taking up extra slack to pull the raft across to port.

We have one more lock to go so we repeat the same process one more time to come up to the level of the lake and once the freighter is out and clear we can emerge from the locks and into Lake Gatun. It’s now getting close to 4:30 in the afternoon. The freighter will continue onto the Pacific side and complete it’s transit tonight. Because we are not fast enough to keep up, and don’t have professional crew, we will stop and spend the night in the lake before continuing on the next morning. I prepare an early dinner of spag bol for the canal advisor who is ready for his “proper meal” - I wonder how often they get spag bol? He will get off tonight and we will get a new advisor morning to take us down through the Pacific side locks.

Rafted to Mai Tai in Lake Gatun

The Lake between the Americas

Lake Gatun was formed by damming of the Chagris River and catches the substantial rains that fall through this mountainous area in the wet season. Why are there locks? Why not just go through at sea level, as the original French consortium had planned? Just like the Suez, right? Well, its all about the tides. On the Atlantic side the tides are in the order of 40 cm between high and low. On the Pacific side however, the difference between high and low can be up to 4 metres. The other factor of course is the variation in the water level in the Gatun Lake, between wet and dry season. All of this needs to be managed. The flooding of the lake is part of managing this tidal difference, but it also avoided a much more extensive excavation and moving of mountains that a sea level canal would have required.

There are some super large ship’s buoys in the lake and we head towards them. As Ollie needs to do some more work on our engines the advisors agree we can raft up with Mai Tai overnight. It’s not allowed to use the dinghy in the lake so we can’t take separate buoys and have Ollie make a house call! Swimming is not permitted either and rumours of crocodiles abound in case anyone is tempted.

Mai Tai attaches to the bouy first. Because of the size of the buoy, yachts moor alongside them rather than taking a line from the bow and swinging around. They take a line from a mid-ships’ cleat to to start with, and then fore and after lines as well. Evan jumps onto the buoy to catch the line as their first lasso attempt missed. I think he saw this on a YouTube video.

Illimite alongside a buoy

Meanwhile our engine woes continue. The jerrycan that was feeding our starboard engine is now empty and the engine has conked out. Its not that we have used 25L of diesel in such a a short time, but just that the excess fuel return has been going back to the main tank rather than into the jerry, so the jerrycan ran out very quickly. We now have more fuel in the main tank than when we started! We make an attempt to come alongside Mai Tai on one engine but it failed. It is quite windy in the lake. Rather than risk a failed second attempt, Keith hands the helm to Tad (great to have another Helia skipper board) and grabs another jerrycan of fuel to replace the empty one. We are back in business with 2 engines and successfully complete the raft up process.

Ollie "McGyver" Maxwell fitting fuel bypass V2.0

The pilot boat comes by and picks up the advisors and Ollie is back on board ITIKI. Before we know it his prosthetic leg is on the deck with the tool box and he is down in the engine bay. This time he upgrades our fueling system to V2.0, with the fuel return coming back to the same jerrycan so we don’t run dry so quickly.

We have our own “proper meal” of curried chicken saving a portion for tomorrow’s advisor, and a celebratory drink. We are halfway between the earths two biggest oceans, floating in the lake between north and south America watching massive cargo ships go by all night. How incredible is that!

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And now for the Pacific Side

We are up early to find the boat covered in ash from a fire that has been burning ashore. As the lake is freshwater we can use the “seawater” wash to clean the deck - Nice one! The new advisor arrives at 7 am and there is no mention of yesterday’s engine problems. The starboard engine starts perfectly. We have 20 nautical miles to travel across the lake, through the Culebra or Gaillard Cut to the entrance of the next set of locks. Our advisor, Harold, is quite a talker and is full of interesting information and history about the canal. He has prepared a series of quiz questions which he poses over the course of the day. I have included these to make sure you were listening!

Harold sets a cracking pace which will get us to our meeting point at Gamboa, well ahead of schedule. We follow the clearly marked shipping channel watching huge Panamax freighters heading in both directions. It’s the smaller tugs though that cause us the most grief, as their bow waves hit us side on, sending the dish rack onto the floor on one occasion. We arrive well ahead of time and use one of our large mooring lines to the lasso the cleat on a large buoy so we can sit and wait. Mai Tai comes next and finally Illimite, our mono friends. We are also waiting for our new lock body, a freighter that is making its way from Gatun locks to join us in the next set of locks. This time they will be behind us. This is to avoid the risk of them being pushed back onto our raft as the lock gates open on Pacific side and salt water meets fresh water.

Waiting at Gamboa

From Gamboa we part company with the Chagris River and what has been the mainly natural path of the river. The Chagris continues north and we head south east and enter the Gaillard Cut. It’s 7.5 nautical miles to our next lock, the Pedro Miguel lock. The Gaillard Cut (formerly known as the Culebra Cut - culebra means snake) is where the major portion of excavation for the Canal took place. It was carved through the rock and shale of the Continental divide and is currently 152 m wide. We pass Gold Hill with its pyramid shaped, stepped-sides and golden yellow vegetation, and continue on under Centenario Bridge before arriving at the entrance to the Pedro Miguel lock. The Gaillard cut is the section most susceptible to landslides and the largest one which occurred in 1915 was the only one to ever cause the canal to close.

First quiz question: How many times has the Panama Canal completely closed to traffic?

Tackling the Pacific side locks

Our raft up procedure goes much more smoothly this time and we are thankful there is no wind to push us around, and that we have 2 engines. We entered the Pedro Miguel lock in unison and this time the advisor on the centre yacht introduces himself and coordinates with the other advisors from the yacht foredeck. Then our lock buddy snuggles in behind us, it’s a huge brown, steel hulk looming over our helm station and dwarfing our little raft. I hope this is the closest will ever come to the front of such a huge behemoth!
In these locks we will be taken down to the level of the Pacific Ocean so to start with we are level with the top of the lock walls. The messenger lines with monkey fists arrive on our foredeck and we send across our mooring lines. The freighter is towering over the canal walls and we see small wooden boats take lines which are lowered from the ship to the waterline level. They then convey these to the shore to be attached to the little trains.

The water level starts to go down and this time the lines are eased as we go. I have decided to have a go as a line handler as I am not too busy making proper meals, tea and coffee etc. I take care of our forward line. The lead advisor calls out commands and blows his whistle to get attention. Harold continues chatting away and the quiz continues:
How many screws are there in the gates of the Pedro Miguel lock?

We reach the bottom, and the gates open in front of us and we (the ITIKI-Illimite-MaiTai raft) move out of the lock and into the Miaflores lake. We have 2 nm to traverse to reach the final two locks.
Next quiz question: Why is there a gap between the Pedro Miguel and Miaflores locks?

We reach the end of the first of the Miaflores locks and have some time for photos while our lock buddy the freighter catches up. He fills the entire lock and we have no chance of seeing the gates close behind us. The water level goes down over about 10 minutes, and then the gates open into the next and final lock. We motor forwarded holding the messenger lines before the mooring lines are sent to shore for the final time. Once again the water level goes down and the gates open. And just like that we are in the Pacific!!
Quiz question: Lake water is used to fill the locks. What percentage of the lock water is recycled?

Team ITIKI

Somehow I expected a bit more of a fanfare, streamers, balloons, marching bands - a bit like the olden days (ie the 70s) when The Empress of Australia left Devonport for the far flung city of Melbourne…
Instead we retrieve the mooring lines, untie the messenger lines and they are whisked away. We move off to port, release the raft and we are free! The McGyver’s V2.0 engine repair is working well - the final fix will be done when we find a calm anchorage somewhere. For the time being with the fuel return going back into the jerrycan the supply will last much longer. It’s another 4nm of motoring, passing under the Bridge of the Americas (which looks remarkably like the Sydney Harbour Bridge) before we reach the Balboa Yacht Club. Two chaps in a panga come out to greet us and we return our rented orange fenders and blue mooring lines, tipping them the mandatory $12.

Foredeck celebrations on Mai Tai

The canal advisors on the other yachts are quickly picked up by pilot boats, but somehow Harold is left cooling his heels for another 10 minutes, while we circle around. Maybe he is in someone’s bad books. Finally he is off and we can drop anchor outside La Playita Marina. It’s a bouncy anchorage with a lot of local traffic, with tourist and pilot boats creating wash as they past too close and too fast. We can relax now though and enjoy an evening meal with the crew and celebrate or successful canal transit. Meanwhile the crew of Mai Tai are also celebrating and provide some entertainment with their disco lights and dancing on the foredeck.

Oh so what about the answers to those quiz questions? Send in your answers in the comments section and we will see how well you score!