We arrived bright and early at 05.00 hrs. at Cristobal breakwater; although bright is too much of a word as it was overcast with showers in the distance. For a change it was fairly quiet at Cristobal and later in the day we found out that for some unknown economic reason, traffic from the Atlantic to the Pacific had been much slower in the last few days than it had been the other way around. That also gave the reason why we were scheduled to sail so late past Gamboa as I mentioned yesterday. Indeed this was confirmed by the pilot, and our southbound convoy only had 14 ships, while northbound had 27. Number 27 was scheduled to clear Gamboa at 11.20 so we prepared accordingly and hoped that all might go a bit faster than foreseen. I wanted to do most of the Canal as soon as possible as there was no rain forecast in the Canal and that meant it was going to be a very hot day.
We started off very well. First locks at 06.30. By the time we entered the first of the Gatun Locks it was just getting lighter and that made for a nice approach with all the Canal lights still on and then good visibility for the first locks while the temperatures were still half decent. Once out we did have to wait in the Gatun Lake anchorage but I decided to go sightseeing past the new locks instead of going at anchor and just sit there. So I did a ships spin off the construction site, a maneuver known in the cruise Industry as the “Balcony Maneuver” ensuring that both sides of the ship got a good view. The result of that activity was a funny story related to me by the off-duty Panama Canal pilot when he came back to the bridge. He had gone to the aft deck for a cigarette and overheard two guests commenting on the “new captain” on board. Due to the spinning around and the drifting, they had formed the opinion that neither the new captain nor the pilot knew what they were doing by “going all over place” and not through the canal. The pilot refrained from introducing himself and explaining what was going on, as he said he was afraid to get a reprimand about why he was not on the bridge. What worries me; is that the whole happening had been carefully explained by the narrator. So I wonder if they did not listen to that will they listen to emergency announcements????
Then we were delayed further because Northbound 25 had an engine failure in the Pedro Miguel Locks and that slowed the process down as behind him was still N 26 and N 27. In the end we sailed past Gamboa at 12.40. From then on it was not so bad, as S 11 ahead of us, did not have to wait for a clear shot through the Continental divide and could clear the next locks and leave it all open to us. That S11 ahead of us was a “small yacht” of about 400 feet long, the Sirene belong to a Ukraine Multi billionaire. It looked quite nice during the day time but at night all the deck lights are green and that makes it look quite spooky and ghostly when you sail behind it.
By the time we passed the Centennial Bridge it started to blow and I had quite a hard time keeping the stern of the Statendam under control while going into the locks, 23 knots of wind on the stern makes a floating apartment building go all over the place.
The next excitement came in the upper chamber of the Miraflores locks. When about to go into the lower chamber, one of the doors stuck in the half open position. There is an emergency procedure to deal with that but it took awhile before the people in charge of that had descended into the dungeons of the locks to get it moving again. But because the Soutbound convoy was small, we did not have to wait anywhere and because of that we could catch up on lost time and by 17.30 we were in open waters again, heading for our next port of call; sightseeing in Golfo Dulce.
That will be tomorrow afternoon. Tonight we will sail south of the coast line of Panama and then by tomorrow morning we will head North West towards the entrance. The weather on the Pacific side is at the moment very good. Little wind and smooth seas but because of that is going to be very warm the coming days.
Leave a Reply