20 April 2007 | Panama City, Panama
On Wednesday, April 18 the stalwart crew of the majestic Bahati began an epic voyage across the world’s greatest feat of human engineering ??” the Panama Canal (I know… drama, huh?).

The Panama Canal transfers ships from one ocean to another through a system of locks. A boat entering at the Atlantic side has to be lifted 85 feet in three steps to the level of Gatun Lake. After crossing 31 miles of the lake, the boat drops 31 feet in one step at Pedro Miguel and enters Miraflores Lake. A mile further south the boat enters a double lock at Miraflores and drops a further 54 feet to the level of the Pacific Ocean.

Gatun Lake, which was created by damming River Chagres, holds the water needed for the operation of the locks. Propelled by gravity the water reaches the locks via a system of culverts located in the central and side walls and nearly as big as the tubes of the Penn Central Railroad crossing under the Hudson River. Next, the water enters several lateral culverts which run under the lock chamber. Each lateral culvert has 5 holes measuring 4.5 feet in diameter. These culverts distribute water through 1000 holes in the chamber floor. The 52 million gallons of fresh water needed to lock a ship from one ocean to another flows into the ocean after having done its work.

After weeks of waiting for the green light from the Panama Canal authority we finally depart the delightful (if distant and removed) Shelter Bay Marina in the mouth of the Caribbean side of the canal. We say good-bye to our new howling monkey and human friends alike, and we’re joined on deck by the helping hands of Michal and Jerry Gould (old friends from South Freeport, Maine - now living in Panama City), Kule Jackman (a longtime friend from Boston, now joining BAHATI’s crew through the Galapagos), and Sarah Spalding (a wonderful Panamanian woman we met on the dock an hour before departing). Alongside Bahati, is our good friend, Dutch singlehanded sailor, Bert Buys, on SEA BERYL, (we’ve been happily sailing in Bert’s company since our first night in the San Blas) and new friends Glenn, Laura, and Michelle off of their boat TURN ONE, who are heading home to Galvanston, TX and lusting for the chance to transit the Big Ditch. The crew of TURN ONE and Betsy, from BAHATI, join Bert to become his linehandlers, while Michal and Jerry man BAHATI’s stern lines and Josh and Sarah work the bow! The Canal Authority requires every yacht to carry 4 linehandlers in addition to a helmsman and an official “advisor”/pilot.

At 3 pm we depart Shelter Bay under power, and head over to “the Flats” decked out with ten garbage-bag covered tires supplied as extra fenders by Enrique Plummer, our “agent”. We drop the hook just off the Panama Canal Yacht Club on the Colon side of the harbor. We spend the next few hours preparing lines and securing our tires to protect BAHATI’s topdsides from smashing up against the concrete walls of the canal, and into the various industrial boats crowding the waters near us. After a couple of hours of hanging out with other nervously waiting yachts, we get the call on channel 12 from the Canal Authority that our first advisor, Marin, will be delivered to the boat in 15 minutes!, We flick the windlass switch and…. nothing! After 3 weeks of well-earned rest our trusty windlass refuses to budge… so, much to Josh’s disappointment, he and Kule haul the anchor by hand and we are on or way… with darkness falling!

We follow frightfully close behind a giant container ship from China, appropriately named DRAKE, and approach the first set of locks. As we approach the first lock, at the gentle but clear instructions of Marin (our canal advisor), we rafted together with a 50+ foot Danish yacht, and our friends on SEA BERYL, so that we were three boats across, and into the locks we go… now rafted (or “nested” as they say here) with 2 other boats, SEA BERYL on the left, WAKALALI from Australia in the middle, and BAHATI on the right. We move in a tight phalanx right up to the stern of the container ship so that we can share the tight water space.

The giant steel lock doors close behind us, retrieval lines with monkey’s fists attached thrown down the 40 foot walls of the locks by long-line sharp shooters, and we secured our “nest” to the lock sides! Then comes the water (remember, they say that it takes 52 million gallons of water to move one boat from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean). The water floods in all around us, causing whitewater and whirlpools, and lifting the three sailboats and the container ship up forty feet. We all then move ahead into the next lock and do it all over again. Within an hour or so we are through three locks, having gone up about 150 feet, and are spit out, gratefully and safely, into Gatun Lake.

By the time we enter the lake it is nearly 10 PM. The only sense we have of our surroundings is that it’s quite expansive, and from the sounds of the tree frogs and the howler monkeys we know we’re surrounded by jungle. Marin, our “advisor”, leaves us and the three sailboats raft up to giant mooring buoys for the night. The crews of BAHATI and SEA BERYL (rafted to either side of one buoy) settle in for a wonderful feast of chili, corn bread, green pirates, and beer - provided by the always ready Betsy and her trusted sous-chef, Bert.

As soon as the sun begins to show, the howler monkeys sound the alarm. EVERYBODY WAKE UP!!! THE SUN IS HERE!!! We all open our eyes to a beautiful fresh water lake surrounded on all sides by pristine jungle. As we sip our morning coffee, trying to shake off the rum from the previous night, our new canal authority advisor, Ivan, is dropped off at the boat. Ivan is a delightful, outgoing man in his late 30s. In fact, all the “advisors” we have met helping yachts thru the Canal have been wonderfully helpful and some downright fun! Some of them are canal pilots in training, some are tug boat captains moonlighting, some work for the Canal Authority in other capacities (Ivan does guided tours and works on the Miraflores visitors’ center and Marin works for the Cristobal Signal Station… the Caribbean side port authority… as a kind of traffic controller for the huge number of ships that transit the canal daily). As we cast off our mooring buoy, Ivan instructs us to go “full speed ahead” and begin crossing the lake. We have about a 5-6 hour passage, and an appointment at the next locks for 11:30. Off we go, slicing our way through the jungle, surrounded by amazing birds and hoping to catch sight of one of the illusive crocs.

When we arrive at the next set of locks, it’s the same procedure as the day before, but in reverse. Raft together, lines out to the lock sides, and the water falls out from beneath us. Then on to the next locks. We pass through three sets, and finally emerge triumphant and glowing into the Grand Pacific Ocean - passing under the bridge of the Americas - with the road above us stretching uninterrupted all the way to Josh’s home in California.

We pop champagne corks offering a small libation to King Neptune and celebrating our arrival at “the point of no return”. From here out, the only way home is to keep going West until we reach the East coast of the United States again.

We are now sitting in Panama City making preparations for our upcoming gigantic ocean passages. Within days we’ll set sail for the Las Perlas in the Gulf of Panama and then on to the Galapagos islands and a 30 day passage to the Marquesas… and beyond!

And what an ocean we are now venturing across!! The Pacific, greatest of oceans, has an area exceeding that of all dry land on the planet. Herman Melville called it “the tide-beating heart of earth.” Covering more than a third of the planet’s surface??”as much as the Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic oceans combined??”it’s the largest geographical feature in the world. Its awesome 165,384,000 square km have an average depth of around 4,000 meters. You could drop the entire dry landmass of our planet into the Pacific and still have room for another continent the size of Asia. One theory claims the moon may have been flung from the Pacific while the world was still young… The liquid continent of Oceania is divided between Melanesia, several chains of relatively large, mountainous land masses, and Polynesia, scattered groups of volcanic and coral islands. North of the equator are the coral and volcanic islands of Micronesia. It’s believed that, in all, some 30,000 islands dot the Pacific basin??”four times more than are found in all other oceans and seas combined. Of the 7,500 islands in the South Pacific, only 500 are inhabited. Something about those islands has always fascinated humans and made them want to learn what’s there. Each one is a cosmos with a character of its own…. (excerpted from Moon Handbooks South Pacific Guide).

Bon Voyage!
The Crew of the Bahati
Betsy, Nat, Josh, and Kule

PS. Did you know? If all the rock and dirt dug from the canal were piled into boxcars, the resulting train would circle the earth four times at the equator.

PPS. Josh would really love to use this volume of the log to delve deeply into the political history of Panama and the region. It’s a rich, rich history, full of flourishing indigenous societies, violent colonization and proud resistance to it, corruption, US invasions, nationalist movements (including one sponsored by the US for Panama to break away from Colombia so they could seize control of the canal zone), and a beautiful people who have lived with dignity through it all. But (!) we’re in a big hurry to get out of here ??” so that will have to wait until next time.