New Dawn's Panama Canal Transit 10-11 March 2014.

Here we have our Identification Certificate and should be all set for the Transit as I have paid the USD 2.100 cost for New Dawn.

We received our pilot with quite a delay and had to wait from 13:30 to around 18:00 till he arrived. This is normal in Panama. Then the cargoship arrived and had to go first into the Gatun lock and we followed behind it.

 Here the first lock gates close behind us.

 Starting to go up. These three locks raises us about 26 m to be level with the lake.

 We spend the night in the lake and were in the middle of the jungle, with loads of noise from the different Hauling Monkey in the tree tops on both side of us.

The following morning I was up at 05:30 as we were not told when the next pilot would arrive and we did not know the transit time for the Miguel Lock. The pilot arrived at 08:00 and we had a transit slot at around 13:00. The distance to the single Miguel Lock was about 30 Nm and we had 4 hours to sail across the lake and the Cut.

 John (USA) enjoying the ride and was my third line-handler. John is looking for a boat to sail to Australia and has a time pressure, which might not be suitable for me.

 This is Virginia (Panamanian) and her boy friend Scott (USA) from the US Embassy, that offered to do the line-handling.

They are dredging the Canal to accommodate the much larger ships, as I described in an earlier Blog entry. If you look well at this photo, you might spot the head of a Crocodile of about 2 m long just in the surface. I did not manage to get its "saw tooth" tail in the photo, but it was there as I fetch my camera.

Our fellow cargo ship arriving after us. In the downwards locks, we had to be in front of the cargo ship. Note the distance on each side of the ship. They are called Panamax Ships, which mean the Maximum size for the Panama Canal.

 Here we are descending the Miraflore lock, which consist of two locks and we end up in the Pacific.

 Our last Miraflore lock and we arrive in the Pacific.

Our pilot depart at the Americas bridge.

The only screen shot, I have received, of our Miraflore locks. Being the biggest boat of the two of us, it was New Dawn that  had to steer us all and also use the engine as we go from one lock to the other.