Rhum Punch's Transit of the Panama Canal
Yea, we're leaving Colon. We've finally gotten our wish. You know what they say about being careful of what you wish for. Our trip was, well, let's just say eventful.The pilot or advisor, Jimmy, arrived promptly at 7 AM on Friday, March 30th. He told us we would be nesting with a German Boat, Nomzano, that's anchored in the flats. He says we have ½ hour before we need to leave, so Karen and Pete take this opportunity to get showers. When you live on a boat, you never pass up the opportunity to get a shower on shore. You can let the water run freely and stay in the shower as long as you want. On the boat, you have to conserve water so a shower consists of wetting yourself with a handheld shower nozzle then turning off the water; shampooing your hair and lathering up your body then turning on the water for a quick rinse.
We leave the dock at 7:30 AM and motor to the flats. We find Nomzano, but their pilot has not arrived yet, so we continue slowly to the first lock. Jimmy is in radio contact with Nomzamo's pilot, Jose, who is now on board. They hurry and catch up with us and we nest to them with our port side next to their starboard side using two lines at the bow, one at the stern, and two spring lines. The container ship, Mar Reina, that is already in the lock informs Jimmy and Jose that he does not want us to go with him. The captain complains that we will delay him by 20 minutes for each lock, which is true. He must be on a tight schedule or he is a jerk. We never learn which, but as we move on we believe it is the later. Jimmy and Jose insist there is room in the lock and we go in behind Mar Reina. Mar Reina is a smaller container ship than the one Pete saw on his previous trip through the canal. We enter the lock with about 30-40 feet between us and Mar Reina and prepare to be "center lock", which means our exposed starboard side will need a bow line and stern line going to the lock wall. The same will be true for Nomzamo's port side. The trick to getting the lines to the lock walls involves workers who are on the top of the lock wall throwing a lighter line with a "monkey fist" knot in the end. The monkey fist gives the line enough weight for the worker to toss it down into our boat. Watch out! Here come the monkey fists. Nothing eventful, but one of the workers gets a lot of ribbing from his cronies for completing missing our boat on his first toss. We tie the end of our heavy 7/8 inch line to the monkey fist and the workers pull our line up and loop it over a large cleat. For the whole trip through the canal Alan assigns Duane as the bow line handler, with Steve assisting and Pete is the stern line handler with Karen assisting. We are told to keep our lines as tight as possible as the lock water rises, but work with the bow and stern line handlers on Nomzamo so that our nest stays in the middle of the lock. We will follow this routine for the other two Gatun Locks as well.
The lock doors close and we begin to rise. At the top Mar Reina will need to engage her engine to begin moving forward, but the electric mules will do most of the work to move the ship into the next lock. As a part of normal procedure we are told to get ready for the prop wash that the ship will kick out when its engine is engaged. The prop wash begins and we are toss around like a cork on the water. Wow! What a ride! Our lines are strained to the max. Somehow our nest is pushed to the left so Rhum Punch's stern line, which has been run through the boat's cleat to one of its winches for additional strength, is taking all the strain. You could see the fiberglass at the base of the winch begin to flex. Pete looks at Alan momentarily and the look they give each other says it all. The winch is a goner at any moment. Suddenly the winch jumps with a loud BANG. Karen screams and Pete gets his knuckles knocked with the winch handle. Somehow the winch and the cleat hold. We are not sure what happened but everything is in one piece. Then the boats straighten out and everything is OK. We guess the captain wants us to pay for delaying him. Yep, he's a jerk.
Before we enter the second lock, Jose has us get a second line ready on the bow of Rhum Punch going to the lock wall. Also he has us put another line on the stern between Rhum Punch and Nomzano. Again we are about 30-40 feet away from the stern of Mar Reina. Jose instructs Pete and the stern line handler on Nomzano to ease out the lines when they strain and tighten them when they are loose. This will help to take the strain off the stern lines - we hope. At the top we all brace ourselves for the worst. The pilots are so worried about the effect of the prop wash on our boats that they have both boats' bow line handlers move back to amidships before the prop wash begins. Here it is comes! Oh no, it's worse. Alan and the other captain are told to put their engines in forward gear and rev them to try to counteract some of the prop wash. Again we are tossed around like corks. Working the sterns lines really helps ease the pressure. But this time the stern fairlead on Rhum Punch's port side that is being used to nest us to Nomzano breaks. Good thing Jose had us put the second line on before we entered this lock. If not, then we would have lost a stanchion or two too. This is only a minor problem, but it is still damage due to the recklessness of the captain of Mar Reina. Everything calms down, but the Mar Reina is not moving. What now?
He must be having a wonderful time. Now he hits us again with a second prop wash. This guy has now graduated to major jerk and is bucking for general. The lines begin to groan from the pressure and Pete and the other stern line handler are easing out and taking the lines as needed. We survive this attack without any damage. That must have been a real disappointment to the major.
One more lock to go before the lake. What will happen there? The locks are 1000 feet long but this time the Mar Reina, which is about 800 feet long, leaves us less room than the previous two locks. Now we are less than 10 feet from her stern. Alan hears Jimmy ask the Mar Reina's pilot to switch channels on his VHF radio. All the pilots carry hand held VHFs. By switching channels Mar Reina's captain can't hear the conversation. Jimmy tells the pilot that we have been having quite a ride back here and now we are only 10 feet off the stern. We hope that conversation helps. This ride could be the worst one yet.
Again we clear the foredeck and get ready on the stern lines and we all hold our breaths as the prop wash begins. To our amazement it's a very smooth ride. We barely rock. It is then our suspicion about Mar Reina's captain is confirmed. He did it all on purpose. Jimmy tells us this is the way prop wash should be. During his 4½ year career of piloting, Jimmy has never seen prop wash like that before. Lucky us.
Now we can concentrate on our other issue. Alan didn't say anything earlier but he kept looking at the engine's temperature gauge. The engine is overheating. We had no choice earlier; we had to keep moving through the locks with the engine but now we can stop in Gatun Lake and see what is wrong. In order to complete the canal in one day we will have to motor about 40 miles to the last set of three locks, which will be all down locks.
Alan turns off the engine and goes below to inspect the problem. It takes a few minutes, but Alan discovers the source of the problem. A clamp broke on the internal cooling system and we lost all the cooling fluid. Alan replaced the clamp and we're on our way. The engine immediately overheats again, so we kill the engine again and drift. Alan checks everything. It all looks OK. We turn on the engine and continue to motor. Soon steam is coming out of the companionway. We turn the engine off again and Alan, Duane and Steve go down into the "steam room."
Jimmy, Pete, and Karen are in the cockpit when Jimmy asks Karen if the engine problem is serious. She has no clue but tells him it's not serious we just need time to cool the engine because it overheated. She hopes she is right. Well, it turns out she's half right. We do need time for the engine to cool down. It's so hot that when Alan pours water into the system it instantly turns to steam. Now that's hot. But there is another more serious problem. When Alan originally went below to check the engine, he closed the fresh water intake valve so when we started the engine no water was getting in to cool the engine. With visions of a real engine problem Alan was concentrating of the possibility of needing a tow, which will cost $1,600 per hour in Gatun Lake, rather than working through the problem he has more than enough experience to fix. Oops! It got so hot a seal in the water pump ruptured and ruined a bearing in the pump and now it's leaking water. This is not a major problem. We can still run the engine in this condition. The problem is the engine is still so hot all water poured into it turns to steam. It will need time to cool.
Jimmy talks to a few people on the radio while Pete sails the boat across the lake. Jimmy tells Alan he has two choices. One, spend the night in Gatun Lake and nest with someone tomorrow; or two, wait until 10:30 PM and tie to the sidewall of the locks with a container ship. Alan chooses to stay in the lake for the night. It's a wise decision. Alan has had a trying day and his crew is hot and tired. We look forward to anchoring across from Gamboa and going for a swim in the fresh water lake. Karen read that there are crocodiles in the lake, but Jimmy says he has only seen two in his lifetime on the lake. We wonder how Jimmy could ever see crocodiles since he tends to sleep during most of the trip excluding the locks. A pilot ship came and picked Jimmy up, leaving us alone for the evening. He says he will be back tomorrow between 10 AM and noon.
We all change into our bathing suits and jump in for a much needed refreshing swim. Everyone stays somewhat close to the boat during our swim. Steve and Karen actually shampoo their hair and wash in the lake. No crocs. In the evening we bird watch. The trees are loaded with birds but no monkeys.
The next day, Saturday, March 31st, Karen wakes up around 7:30 AM and goes on deck. Alan is standing on his bunk so his head and upper body are through his hatch. Karen gets the binoculars and starts looking for animals. She sees two green parrots fly by, an osprey hunting for fish, two black birds on the shore that reveal brilliant yellow feathers when they fly, a small finch that lands on our pulpit, and another yellow breasted bird that perches on our windvane. Suddenly, she sees a large V wake about 30 yards from our boat. It's a CROC!! It's about 10 feet long. She can see his snout, eyes and upper back. She whispers to Alan about it. He jumps out of the hatch and Karen hands him the binoculars. They both watch the croc swim off into a small inlet. Wow, we were swimming in this croc-infested water last night!
Karen tells everyone else when they wake up about the croc sighting. Duane jumps in the water anyway for a swim, but stays very close to the boat this time. Pete, Steve and Alan put the dinghy in the water and row over for a closer look. When they get closer they only see a little (4 feet) croc. The big one is nowhere to be seen. They return to the boat and we have omelets for breakfast courtesy of Duane.
Jimmy shows up at 10 AM with a big bag of ice. Yea! Ice cold drinks for the day. We do have refrigeration on board but no freezer. Ice is always a nice treat. We pull up the anchor and motor towards the Pedro Miguel locks, which is the first down lock. During our motoring, we cross the Continental Divide. Looking at this, you can see why people say the Panama Canal is an engineering marvel. This is where most of the mudslides happened during construction and hundreds of migrant workers lost their lives. At the Pedro Miguel locks we tie up and have to wait about 20 minutes for a container ship (not Mar Reina - she completed her transit yesterday) to get into the lock.
Today, we will transit the locks along the lock sidewall with a small tourist boat in front of us and a large container ship behind us. This means that we will have one bow line and one stern line tied to the lock wall and Rhum Punch will go down next to the wall.
The
line handlers on the boat will ease out the line as the lock water level falls.
Also, since we are now in front of the large ship in our lock, we do not have
to worry about prop wash except the little bit being put out by the tourist
boat. This should be a piece of cake. And it is.We transit the next two locks, which are the Miraflores Locks, with little to report as far as excitement. The Miraflores Locks is where the Internet camera sits on a tower and a viewing stand is nearby for tourists to watch the locks function. It's a popular thing for tourists in Panama City to take a bus to the viewing stand and watch a few ships go through the locks. As we are waiting we listen to an announcer explain how the canal locks work. We hear him announce Rhum Punch by name and that she is from Toronto, Canada. We all take a bow and wave to the audience.
We are bummed when we look at the Internet camera. We
know that despite trying to estimate our arrival at the Miraflores Locks for
our family and friends to see us we are a day late and no one we know is likely
to be watching now.We have made it through the Canal! For the first time ever Rhum Punch is sitting in Pacific waters. We motor about 10 minutes and a pilot boat pulls up along side and takes Jimmy away. Jimmy looks well rested as he waves goodbye to the crew of
Rhum
Punch. Yes, he slept again today except in the locks. We motor under the
Bridge of Americas and moor at the Balboa Yacht Club.We end up mooring next to a Swedish boat named Peter Pan. Peter Pan is about 16 feet long and was built by the owner and captain, Nills. He has been living on it for the past 10 years. He launched the boat in Sweden, sailed down the European coast and out to the Canary Islands. From there he sailed to Cape Verde, then on to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and up the South American coast to Panama. We originally met him in Colon. He left on Sunday, April 1st for the Galapagos Islands. We'll probably run into him again.