Typical Cruisers Heading Through the Cana

 

We are not your typical cruisers heading through the canal. Not only are we going to the Pacific side at Panama City, we are almost immediately turning around and coming right back to Colon. Our agent, Tina, who made all the arrangements and secured the necessary permits, says she has never known anyone to transit through and back like this before.

Cruisers usually go on to sail the Pacific and sometimes around the world. However, my goal is simply to sail the Panama Canal. Having been told we would begin our transit at 1930, we cast off promptly at 1730 to head for the Flats area, partway up Colon Harbor, and wait for our pilot. Before long, though, we get a radio call saying we’ll be delayed until 2230—disappointing because now it will be dark by the same we enter the first lock.

As we wait, I think about how we find ourselves here, on this most unusual of canal transits, that and how quickly this came about since my husband, Joe, and I first talked about it. After reading The Path between the Seas by David McCullough, and watching The Building of the Panama Canal on the Discovery channel for the third or fourth time I said to him.

“I want to sail through the Panama Canal,” adding that I think it’s one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century. Of course, travel anywhere, especially if it involves water, gets Joe’s attention. And so we began making plans to sail through the Panama Canal and back the following winter instead of sailing to the Caribbean as we had done so many times before.

This, in turn, is what led to our bobbing about on the Flats waiting our turn to go through. Finally, the pilot finally arrives, an officious man who sits in the cockpit talking to the control tower on his radio and paying us little attention. Promptly at 2230 he gets a call and tells Joe to proceed. We fall in line behind an enormous black Russian freighter and motor into the Gatun Lock.

As we do so, the line handlers spring to life, each taking his post at the bow and stern. Meanwhile, their shoreside counterparts appear at the side of the lock and hurl long lines with weighted monkey’s fists on the ends up to which we attach our docklines so they can be hauled up to the bollards lining the dock walls.

It’s choreographed like a ballet, although the pilot makes sure to keep clear. Apparently, there is considerable hostility between the line handlers and the pilots because of the enormous disparity in pay and prestige. Dracula tells us there is a bonus for any line handler who hits the pilot with a weighted monkey’s fist.

Once all is secure, the freighter rests against the side of the lock, and we maintain a short distance astern. Overhead lights illuminate everything as the canal operates 24 hours a day. We were told it has operated continuously since 1914, closing for only three hours at the beginning of WWII.