the Panama Canal

staying in the shelter bay marina in colon was all about stocking up and servicing several bits and pieces on maloo.

while mark did an engine and generator service, cleaned and polished i went several times to the supermarkets to buy food that would feed us to australia.

as things are said to be rather expensive (if available) in the southern pacific, this seems a good thing to do, but how much f.e. pasta does one need for 7 months- how many bottles of shampoo? - how many cans of peaches? how much uht milk? and most importantly...how much beer?

well, we are not sure if we answered these questions right, but I'm pretty sure we will have too much of some and not enough of other.

then the big day came! the transit through the canal. we had already done some line handling on lazy bones a week earlier, to get a feeling of whats going on - still, doing it on and with your own boat is truly special!

just a few facts: the panama canal starts with the three Gatun Locks on the atlantic side, then little boats like us get to stay one night in Lake Gatun, a beautiful fresh water lake surrounded by forrest and howler monkeys. it is also said that there is crocodiles in the lake - we haven't seen them though - at that stage, the ships are lifted a total of 26m (which sounds much more impressive when you say 84feet) from atlantic sea level. the next morning you start at 6:00am going about 30nm through the lake and through the Gaillard Cut to the Pedro Miguel Lock and then further onto the two Miraflores Locks - so 3 Locks down again, before finally entering the pacific - and here you might be lowered a total of 31m, as there is a 5m tide on the pacific side.

all in all the transit cost us 1300US: 800US for the canal itself, the rest for extra fenders and lines and the agent and and and. the big container ships pay up to 350,000US -so we got away cheap, hey?

so on the 25th of march at 1.30pm an adviser came to our boat and off we went to the first locks. we rafted up with a little french yacht - being the bigger boat with the stronger engine mark had to do all the maneuvering - not sooo easy if you are in two monohulls and especially challenging if the captain on the french boat does not want to give up his wheel and starts steering too...but mark managed just fine.

and how good he was he got to prove just in the first lock, when the line thrower up on the lock wall missed the stern of the french boat. it took him forever to get his throw line sorted again. with nothing holding the raft, we drifted towards the wall (you will see a little bit of it on the video) and with only a meter left to the wall and to the big container ship in front of us, finally the stern line got put on and the raft was pulled to the middle. only the bow thruster and mark using our prop walk held our maloo off the wall.

after that though, everything went fine! a lovely night in the lake with great people - our line handlers mike, bob and cale - and an early start the next day. sure enough at 6:00 sharp two new advisers came on board to do the rest of the transit with us.

so enjoy our little video....and see if you can spot the "full moon"! thanks mike!

better to be watched on youtube though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UJ3Asl89nk&feature=youtu.be

Mark, the adviser and Bob focusing on the job

one last look back!

Panamax = bloody huge

relaxing ON the buoy for the night at lake gatun

just as we came in to panama city -  a surprise visitor: Steve Job's yacht Venus

have to admit she's quite stunning seen live  

the (unexpected) skyline of panama city

one of the few 2-finger sloths that live near our anchorage

and they do move quite fast i have to say

we are currently in panama city - stocking up on a few more things (like new fishing gear and a spear gun) and will head off to the las perlas islands soon. there we will wait for a bit of wind to go to galapagos...or flat enough seas to motor there, as the doldrums go straight through that passage and not a whole lot of wind is to be expected.

nevertheless...galapagos, here we come!