Panama Canal

PANAMA CANAL

When we arrived in Panama we stayed @ Shelter Bay Marina, located in Colon on the Atlantic side. Dick and Terry flew home from Colon. We will miss you. We met a lot of real nice people on the docks. Georgio & Irene from Argo have been through the canal several times. They showed us how to save money by not hireling an agent. The paperwork was fairly easy. We saved $ 600.00 doing the canal paperwork ourselves. Our crossing date is Jan 10, 2009. Ed Barlow one of our friends from CO. flew down to cross the canal with us. He was really great fun. We really enjoyed his company. Lea & Less joined us as line handlers. Thanks for all your help.

Crossing the canal from the Atlantic side takes two days. You are given a time to cross by the advisor; he then boards your boat and helps with instructions to stay safe. There were tires tied along side of our boat with black trash bags wrapped around them to protect our boat. We were tied up to a smaller boat. Cheryl was at the helm Carl, Ed, Lea and Less were the rope handlers. We had to provide all the food and drinks for the crew for both days. Cheryl had to pull the smaller boat into the locks and hold them both still while the line handlers tightened the ropes to keep the boats in the center of the locks. The lock doors are closed and the water enters the lock, lifting us to the next level. There were men on the sides of the locks that walked along side of the boat carrying the ropes to the next lock. There are three locks on each side of the lake. The Gatun Lake is about 35 miles long so we anchored for the night and the advisor left us and a new one showed up the next morning for the rest of the crossing. We had excellent crew no problems at all, real nice advisors. It surely was a chance of a lifetime to experience the Panama Canal. Beautiful jungle views from the lake. Monkeys wake you up in the morning. It was quite the experience. Thanks so much to all that helped out to make this a successful journey.