It is always exiting to transit the Panama Canal for the first time, but not only is it expensive (USD 2.300 for me), cumbersome, loads of paperwork, loads of rules and silly regulations and most of yacht owners like to have a go with another boat as line handler. I offered my line handling to friends we have met in 2007 in Greece and last Thursday 20 February we sailed out toe the agreed anchorage "the Flats" and received our pilot very late at almost 18:00 instead of 13:00 and the fun started.
Our pilot for the evening arrive. These pilots are a strange bunch of people, most are arrogant and spoiled people and don't really know what they are doing, except to give silly and contradicting orders. This one was very lazy and the other that evening was a real "Hitler type" and I had to tell him a few things of how to behave, before he, in the end, became acceptable and even polite to me.
Skipper David at the helm. We shared that duty all day, as he seemed to have confident in me.
On our way to the first Lock. Plenty of shipping and going close by.
These are a few of the gates to be installed in the Canal's expansion program; they are huge.
We had to get into the lock close after the white cargo ship.
Here we are rafted together with Israeli and US Cat.
Very impressive power of the tugs in the Canal.
Entering the lock. No more photos from this, as we were busy.
Arriving at the first stop after the three locks and now in the Gutan Lake for the night. We had to attach the boat to this round fortunately soft buoy
The next day started with another lazy pilot arriving at 07:30 and off we went for the four hours motoring across the Lake.
An impressive sight when this car carrying Ro-Ro ship approach us close up during the last three locks descending into the Pacific.
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