Many of the cruisers are well-off Los Estados Unidos gringos who have spent most of their lives at home being filled with fear from the media. We therefore took our warnings of the dangers of Colón with a grain of salt. After all most cities can be dangerous if you don’t use common sense. However, while not quite as bad as most made it out to be, Colón is a city of great economic disparity, a 50% unemployment rate, and therefore unusually high crime. A fellow cruiser aboard World Wind was yanked into an alleyway at gunpoint close to where he was doing laundry. After taking a swing at the man with the gun, he lost only his passport, pants and perhaps a little dignity walking back to the laundromat in his underwear. An unusually unlucky man, on his second visit to the city (and only his second day in the city), his dinghy and outboard were stolen right off his boat. So, while we almost always go for walking, we took cabs at night and when going through dangerous sections.
It was our goal to be out of the city as quickly as possible and yet, while never having been through the canal, we wanted the experience in order to be comfortable bringing Chandrika through. While waiting for an opportunity to line-handle on another boat, we were visited by our good friend, Steph, who hoped to share the canal experience with us. Unfortunately, Steph was unable to stay long enough to go through the canal. She left after a brief but wonderful four day visit. Having had no luck going through on another vessel, we opted to get the show on the road. We paid our fees, including signing a contract that we would owe an additional $400 + if we went less than 8 knots through the canal (with a hull speed of 7.5 knots, we told them we did 8), along with another additional $800 + if we damaged the canal walls (likely story).
Steph visits, bringing many bursts of happiness to Colón
The next step was to get 4 heavy ropes over 125 feet and many tires to protect Chandrika’s topsides, prior to the official inspection and measurement necessary for canal transit. The canal traffic was low, and the scheduling office gave us a date only 4 days post inspection. Our friends, Slim and Gail, aboard Miss Gale and their daughter, Wendy, and Sue made up the four necessary line handlers. Graham took on the role as captain for our transit. We were ready to go.
On October 28th at sunset, our advisor (the Autoridad del Canal de Panamá, ACP, personnel in charge of assisting us through the locks) came aboard. We motored towards the Gatun Locks, the first set of locks for the canal.
There are several ways a sailboat can transit through the locks. The preferred method, which we were fortunate enough to experience the entire way through, is to be “center-tied”. This means that the sailboat motors into the center of the chamber. Four long dock lines are used to secure the boat to the side walls. The engine is put in neutral, and now the lines are used to control the position of the boat. On the way up, the water enters the chamber. As the boat rises, the distance between the boat and the top of the sidewalls, where the boat is secured, becomes shorter. To compensate, the line handlers on the boat take in the slack, being careful to keep the boat straight and in the center of the chamber. After the chamber is full, the lines are released from the wall. The captain then uses the boat’s engine to motor into the next chamber, where the procedure is repeated.
We passed through the three chambers of Gatun Locks so quickly (in 1 and 1/2 hours), it was difficult to register everything that happened. Part of the haste was because the canal workers were in a hurry. They double-culverted us, meaning that they filled each chamber twice as quickly as normal. It being our first time through, we did not realize that this was unusually hectic. As soon as our lines were placed on the cleats of the sidewalls, the water would rush in, creating circular swirls of turbulence. On the 3rd and last chamber of Gatun Locks, our lines were secured to the cleats by the ACP workers up above. Then, for some unknown reason, one of the workers removed one of the lines from the cleat. With the engine in neutral, the turbulence from the water coming into the lock immediately pushed on our bow sideways and Chandrika was now positioned perpendicularly in the chamber. Our wonderful advisor began screaming into the radio, yelling at the authorities not to run water into the lock, because “my vessel is in a compromised position” at the fault of an ACP worker. Thanks to our excellent advisor and some serious line-handler sweat, no harm was done. (We have been through the canal twice since bringing Chandrika, and we have yet to meet an advisor as good as the one we had while going through Gatun Locks.)
After passing through Gatun Locks, we motored to a mooring buoy, where our advisor departed and we prepared to spend the night. We were now on Gatun Lake, just over 80 feet above sea level.
In the morning, we woke on the calm stillness of the lake to the sounds of howler monkeys. Graham, Sue, and Slim went for a morning dip. After spotting a crocodile, we decided it was time to dry off and to wait for our new advisor.
Slim and our Panamanian advisor
Our advisor (not the same one as yesterday) finally arrived at 9:45am, over three hours late. We were finally on our way. We motored through the 23.5 mile long channel that spans Gatun Lake. We entered the Pedro Miguel lock at 1:30pm, having averaged a little over 6 knots. Now began our descent back to sea level. We were the only boat in the entire lock. 10 million gallons of fresh water was spent to down-lock a single 34 foot sailboat, giving us images of a Cheerio being flushed down the toilet. Down-locking was much more relaxing than the hasty up-locking of the night before.
Gail after an exhausting 2 days and a brief squall
An ACP worker crossing the canal on top of the chamber door
After the Pedro Miguel Lock, we continued on to the Miraflores Locks and our final two chambers. While we waited for a cargo ship to arrive, we were told to dock against the wall. After an hour and a half, the ship arrived, and we were instructed to pull away from the wall and prepare for center tie-up. The ACP workers passed us the ends of two lines, called monkey fist lines, that we would use to send them our dock lines after our boat was positioned in the middle of the chamber. One end of the line was therefore on our boat and the other end was in the hands of the ACP worker on the wall/ dock. Being too lazy to feed out the appropriate amount of line as we pulled away from the wall, he decided to throw a huge 100 foot long wad of line into the water, right at our propeller.
The ship behind us in the Miraflores locks
Chandrika has a keel-mounted rudder with a small cut-out just for the propeller. Protected as it is, the line became entangled, and Graham quickly threw the engine into neutral. We were not allowed to dive the prop and after going between forward and reverse, the line twisted free, but we doubted that was all of it. We down locked without trouble and upon exiting the locks, we throttled up to 80% maximum speed. The shaft and propeller shuddered.
While still in the canal, we convinced the advisor to allow us to pull to the side, drop the hook at 2:1 scope and dive the propeller on the basis that the shaft could come free and the boat could sink. Graham dove with a knife and found a wad of rope 20 layers thick on the 1” of exposed shaft between the boat and the propeller. Cutting off the rope revealed that it had eaten 1.5” into the rubber lining of the bronze cutlass bearing (a bearing around the shaft that keeps the shaft from wobbling). Further inspection of the shaft at the coupling (where the shaft attaches to the engine transmission), we found that the set screws had come loose, allowing the rope to pull the shaft about 1” out of the coupling. Without divots in the shaft, we put in the two spare set screws we had, wired them together, hauled up the hook (anchor) and were on our way to drop off the line-handlers. With a ripping current, darkness upon us and stress high, we were fortunate to have a panga come up to Chandrika and bring them ashore. (Docking was the only other foreseeable option at the time.) “Welcome to the Pacific,” we thought, as we dropped the hook for the night.
We soon discovered after much effort and frustration that the shaft was permanently out from the coupling (unless we pulled out the engine), as we could not get it to go in the final ½”. Graham carefully drilled new divots into the shaft for the set screws, which along with the key and machine fit will have to do until Chandrika gets hauled out again. Furthermore, while we could have tried to get the ACP to take responsibility for the damage, the foreseeable bureaucratic hoops made it not worth the effort. Hey! Look on the bright side – we can now fit a larger and better zinc anode onto the shaft (to prevent corrosion of the propeller). With headaches behind, an ocean lay ahead.
