Go east young man

Great trivia fact: to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Panama Canal actually involves going east rather than west. We have done a fair number of locks in the past, but these have mostly been in France. The etiquette there is to rev up your engine and charge for the lock gates the second they open. Those unwilling to incur bumps and scratches to their boat may choose to hang back, but you then risk missing the lock altogether. And just being at the front for the next lock means nothing. I’m not sure there’s even a word for queuing in French.

Thankfully the situation in Panama could not be more different; every second of the transit is choreographed in fine detail. It all starts with a visit by an “admeasurer” whose primary job it is to measure the length of your boat. The key here is to be less than 50 feet. Shepherd Moon is probably 49’ 6” by the time you take into account the overhang of the anchor at the front and the assorted bits and bobs that stick out at the back, but if the admeasurer chose to take his tape over the top of the hard top rather than through the middle, that would probably add on 6” and cost us another US$500. Thankfully we had a kindly admeasurer, he even asked me to hold the end of the tape! It was certainly worth plying him with our very precious, homemade fruitcake. The admeasurer also checks that you have all the right safety equipment, and, more randomly, clean loos with hand soap for the advisor who will be travelling with you.

On the day of departure you are issued with big heavy ropes to secure you to the lock sides and equally beefy fenders to protect the boat should the scary lock walls come too close. We were to go through the lock in nests of 2 or 3 (we were lucky enough to be rafted with a catamaran, Smoke and Roses, whose skipper, apart from being an ex fireman, is used to manoeuvring large barges!) We all waited with baited breath to be given the signal to leave the marina and head for a holding area to collect our advisor.

As far as we can tell the advisors job is to eat your food, check his mobile phone, and give odd bits of advise which are usually contrary to that being given by the advisors on the other boats. Thankfully, the demands of our advisor were none too arduous. One boat offered their advisor toast and cereal, only to be told that he was on a special diet that required him to have bacon, eggs, hash browns and sausages for breakfast (where have I gone wrong? I ask for that most mornings but haven’t seen a cooked breakfast since the middle of the Atlantic. Perhaps I need to break the freezer!).

Then the word went out to move to the locks and raft up, no mean feat when the wind is blowing you towards the locks at 3 knots and you have huge boats to keep clear of. We were transiting via the old set of locks, built just over a hundred years ago and still working perfectly. The lock gates towered above us and made us feel very small. To give an idea of size, the previous day we had watched the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship go through the same lock with just inches to spare either side.

Once in the locks, the main danger is from flying monkey fists (a knot ball on the end of a thin line, designed to give it sufficient weight to throw), which overtime have become rock-hard. The first one slammed into the boom about six inches from my head. Once retrieved, the thin line is tied to our borrowed heavy line, which is hauled back to the shore and dropped over a bollard. The big boats are moved within the locks by “mules”, or little trains, but for the little boats like us, each raft is walked through by four lock-men, rather like taking a giant, floating hound for a walk.

Once the heavy lines are secured, the real work starts for the line-handlers (in our case, Vanessa and Jacob). It is their job to take up the slack as the boats rise (or let the rope out as it falls), whilst trying to keep the raft more-or-less in the middle of the lock. This is far harder than it sounds, given the swirling currents created by the water flooding into the lock. It takes three locks to raise you to the level of Gatun Lake, which is 85 metres above sea level, and thankfully we managed to negotiate all three without incident. We got through the last of the locks as night fell.

At dawn the following morning we were awoken by the howl of howler monkeys from the jungle on the banks of the lake, and shortly afterwards we were re-joined by our friendly advisors. Thankfully our advisor had already breakfasted and so instead he focused on keeping us in the right channel as we navigated the 30 or so miles across the lake towards the Miraflores locks. Usually this is done at great speed, but, for whatever reason, our advisors seemed to want to spin out their day of boating and so we spent a lot of time just drifting with the wind (not sailing, that’s not allowed) across the lake.

As approached the Gaillard Cut, tensions began to rise. Our advisor was telling us to go to the left of the channel, while boss advisor on Smoke and Roses was telling him to move to the right and the trainee advisor on our boat was saying to go backwards! And then, after nearly 9 hours of going as slowly as we possibly could, we were told to race at full speed towards the lock as a tanker was coming up close behind.

As we went though the Miraflores locks we spent a lot of time waving into space hoping to be seen by the lock webcam. Jacob was in touch with family at home who were directing us where to look. It made it all the more special to think that friends and family at home were watching, although from the screen shots we saw, you could hardly make out which yacht was Shepherd Moon, let alone identify the cavorting crew on the deck (Jacob insisted on doing a sloth impression from the boom). As we left the final lock and headed under the iconic Bridge of the Americas, the sun was setting to the west and a huge full moon was rising to the east. It was a fitting welcome to the Pacific and the next leg of our adventure.