Busy times in Panama

As soon as we arrived in Panama after the San Blas, we started to make all the arrangements to cross the famous canal. We chose Portobelo as a base following the advice of our friends from Shaitanne, the French boat we had met in San Blas.

Portobelo has a stunning bay and a friendly village. In the colonial times the Spanish had a fleet based here, as all the gold coming from Peru was brought to Portobelo and shiped to Spain. They were attacked many times by pirates and there is a saying that Sir Francis Drakes’ treasure is buried somewhere in the bay. The surrounding nature is lush and in the morning one wakes up with the shouting of the monkeys. There are three rivers departing from the bay, which you can explore by kayak and so we did.

Two years ago, hurricane Otto hit the bay of Portobelo and nowadays there are many wrecks. We met Thomas, whose boat had been pushed onto shallow water next to the mangrove and he is still living aboard, planning to get his boat out from there one day. 

The village hasn’t got much left of its old grandeur but one gets quickly caught by the caribbean atmosphere with the colourful houses and the sounds. The locals seemed a bit reserved at first but by saying hi with a smile everytime you pass next to a house where they often sit by will make them friendlier towards you. All the little supermarkets in town (there are 5) are managed by chinese people and the locals name them by number based on their location. So when asking for directions, people will answer you: that’s next to chinese number three. And so on. And then there are the buses “los diablos rojos”, old american school buses tuned and personalized with graffiti and big sound systems, quite an experience. Some interesting projects are also going on in Portobelo, and one of them is La Escuelita del Ritmo, a free music school for the children of this town managed by an ONG.

While in Portobelo we started the procedure to get a transit date for the canal:

First we downloaded and filled up the form 4405 from the canal website and emailed it back to them. The morning after we called the canal to see if they had received our form and to set up an admeasurement date. The admeasurement of the boat can only be done at the Flats anchorage in Colon or at Shelter Bay marina.We went to the Flats (less than 20 nm from Portobelo) the day before our measurement date and had to call the next morning at 7:30 to make sure the admeasurer was coming. 

He came around midday, measured the boat, filled up a few forms, and asked us the darest question… How fast do you go under engine? 5 knots we said. That’s ok, he answered. He really only cared about the comfort of the advisor who was to come with us onboard for the transit, what were we going to give him for lunch, and whether he would have enough shadow to protect from the sun and enough bottled water. He gave us a transit ship number and a paper with which to go and pay at the Citybank in Colon.

The admeasurer also explained us that for the transit you need 4 handliners + the skipper, 4x38m 22mm diameter ropes and a lot of fenders to protect your boat. There are some agents that rent the whole set to you and you can also pay a local linehandler to come and help. We didn’t do any of that and we bought the lines new from a shop called Maxindustries together with Miti (who were crossing a week before us) and got some old tyres for free from the mechanic in Portobelo. We asked Inga and Peter to come as linehandlers, so we only had to look for one more person.

Now comes the interesting part. The canal crossing for a boat under 50 feet costs 1875 USD only payable in cash at the Citybank in Colon (890 are returned to you after the transit if all goes well). There is no cash point at the Citybank. And Colon is the most dangerous town in Panama. So to carry all the cash on us we took a bus from Portobelo and then a taxi. I needn’t say that we felt very relieved after handing all those dollars out to the bank.

After payment was made, we called Marine Traffic and ask for a transit day. There was some talk that the waiting time was about 3 weeks. We needed some time anyway because we were planning to take Cirrus out of the water and do some work, so we asked for the 15th of April and they accepted.

Now that we had a transit date, we started planning the work on Cirrus. The most important thing was to change the rudder bearings, as there was quite a lot of vibration when helming. For that we had to order a good material which doesn’t absorb water. We ordered a Delrin (acetal) rod from the US and found a workshop to make the new parts. We thought if we were goin to lift Cirrus out of the water we might as well take the opportunity to paint the new antifouling, with a clean hull we were more likely to reach the 5 knots required on the transit of the canal. The only problem was to find aluminium compatible paint in Panama and in the end we ordered coper free Pacifica Plus antifouling from Marine Warehouse in the US.

Once we had everything ready, partly thanks to Erik our friend in Panama City who drove us around running errands, we lifted the boat in Panamarina, 10 miles away from Portobelo. This marina is located in the middle of beautiful vegetation. The bad side of this are the mosquitoes or “chitras”/ “no see ums” which every day at sunrise and sunset reminded us who was the boss in there. 

We were very happy to be back on the water after four days of hard working and almost no sleeping, as the boat gets so hot out of the water and the 6 o’clock chitras had been the most powerful waking up alarm.

Last preparations were done in Portobelo. We met Meryem, a turkish sailor who was going to be our fourth linehandler. We called Marine Traffic to know whether we were transiting the canal on one day or two, they said two, and that we were meant to start on Sunday afternoon. On Friday we did a full service of the engine, with the little surprise that the fuel filter was completely stuck and we couldn’t remove it. Luckily the mechanic in Portobelo removed it for us.

We left Portobelo on Saturday. It was a local celebration day and the whole village were out partying. We said goodbye and we set sail to Colon with Meryem. On the way to the Flats anchorage we had perfect sailing conditions and we caught a sailfish. Yes to fish BBQ at the Flats to relax the atmosphere.

Our friends from Miti came the day after on a watertaxi from Colon and after a call to marine traffic on channel 12, they confirmed that the first advisor would come onboard to pass the Gatun locks at 17 h that evening. After a long wait the advisor came and we rafted up with two other sailboats: a beautiful classic looking Fairlie from 2014 in the middle, an aluminium Cigale 14 on port and Cirrus on starboard (no fiberglass boats!). We went up the three first locks tied together without any incident. The boat in the middle was controlling the whole pack and we just had to send the starboard aft line to shore. We went up three locks to the Gatun lake, where we spent the night tied to a buoy.

The morning after at 7 sharp our next advisor came onboard. We quickly tidied up the breakfast and set out to do the 28 miles between the Gatun lake and the Pedro Miguel locks. The advisor made me feel more relaxed from the start, when he said that he understood if we could not quite reach 5 knots considering we were 6 people onboard. Cirrus and the engine behaved very well and we just managed to keep the speed all the way. We made the advisor happy by playing salsa music and cooking “arroz con coco” for lunch.
At 12 we were on the first locks of the Pacific, the Pedro Miguel locks. This time we only tied up to the Cigale 14 because the Fairlie had arrived a little earlier and gone on the other lock. A ferry and a Panax ship came behind us, I don’t ever want to be so close from the bow of such a ship again. 

After Pedro Miguel came Miraflores locks, where the current going out is quite strong but despite that all went well. The doors of the last locks finally opened and the Pacific Ocean welcomed us with a thunderstorm. It didn’t matter we had made it! What a great feeling. 

A week and a half later we are at anchor in Las Brisas, Panama City. The contrast between this huge city and Colon or Portobelo is massive. Here you have many american style malls, bus with air conditioning and metro, a skyscrapper district. 

We have taken some advantage of being in such a place and done a lot of shopping. We have provisioned rice, pasta, flour and tins for at least 5 months. And we have gone a bit crazy at the fruit market and bought so much fruit and vegetables for the crossing. We have sold the lines we bought for the canal to another boat doing the passage.

Cirrus is ready and we are eager to go. This time I am not nervous as I was before the Atlantic crossing. I feel very calm and looking forward to 30-40 days of blue. This will be the longest passage we sail together, 4000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean.