Of Monkey Fists and Cleat Hitches

Panama City, Panama

Greetings from the Pacific Ocean! We successfully transited the Panama Canal yesterday and are thrilled to be back in the Pacific. The journey yesterday actually started the night before on May 1^st at 9:30 p.m., when our three Panamanian line handlers, Tito, Alex and Javier arrived on Kailani to sleep aboard. We then had a 3 a.m. wakeup to move Kailani out to the anchorage area in time to meet the pilot boat that dropped off Rick, our Panama Canal advisor. The Panama Canal Authority requires all small boats transiting the Canal have four line handlers (Jen being the fourth), a Canal advisor (usually an off duty tug captain) and, almost as an afterthought, the captain of the vessel. This seemingly overstaffed crew are needed to safely navigate the three Gatun locks that take us up to Lake Gatun, transit the 28 miles across that lake, then negotiate the three locks that take us down to the Pacific, one at Pedro San Miguel and the last two at Miraflores. Typically each lock will have a large commercial ship with three small boats rafted up behind on the way up in Gatun and in front on the way down to the Pacific. In our case the third boat had to postpone two days so we were a raft of two.

Going through the Canal is quite an experience with the Canal itself a marvel of civil engineering. Completed by the United States in 1914 (who took it over from the French who had tried to dig a sea level canal through the isthmus) it remains basically unchanged to this day. The “donkey” engines which assist the big ships through are no longer steam powered but they run on the original tracks. For us small sail and power boats, though, the manner in which we go through the locks is unchanged. In each lock the prop wash from ships and the rapidly changing water levels as the lock fills or empties 30 feet at a time makes staying in the center of the lock difficult but essential to mitigate the risk of smashing into one of the canal walls.

Sailboats are typically rafted together and put in the lock with a ship, maximizing transits for the Canal.

Our on board advisor directs the whole thing like a symphony (minus a few harmonics). First he and the other sailboat’s advisor tell everyone how they want the boats nested – which side, which lines go where – all optimized so that the movement of the two or three nested boats don’t damage each other. Then we motor together with our joined boat into a lock according to the direction of the advisor: for the up locks we were behind a ship, and for the down locks ahead of a ship. All direction for motoring into place is from the advisor, constantly directing with “center, midship, port, starboard, slow, neutral, reverse, STOP!”. He then whistles loudly, and directs himself to the four canal line handlers on the canal walls who prepare to throw a monkey fist attached to a lead line to our boats.

These monkey fists are hard round balls of line and randomly land on the boat – the sailboat next to us had padding on their solar panels as sometimes the monkey fist can land and crack those. Our line handlers then grab the monkey fist and tie its line to one of the 100′ floating 1” blue lines (that we have to rent) – two on the bow, and two on the stern. Then the on-land handlers retrieve our lines by pulling their lead line back, finally tying off the blue lines to the bollards atop the canal. When we are all secured, the advisor whistles again indicating we are ready. Alarms sound ashore, the locks close, water fills or empties, and our on board line handlers constantly keep the lines taught on the bow and stern by easing or trimming, keeping the boats centered and off the lock walls.

The coordination amongst the ships’ pilots, tug boats, and our advisor is ongoing between the locks, making sure everyone gets to where they are supposed to at the same time. The Canal determines on the day of transit who will be in which locks and the timing for each transit’s arrival at those locks. Between the up locks on the Colon side and the down locks on the Panama City side, is Lake Gatun, a man made lake created for the purposes of the Canal. The lake is rife with logs and dead tree stumps and the occasional crocodile (no swimming allowed!), so transiting the lake itself requires staying within the well marked ship channel. In places the channel is so narrow, with land on either side, that it can get dicey when crowded.

For most of our transit of the lake, we had a “New Panamax” container ship just off our port quarter (1,200 feet long and as tall as a small skyscraper, they are the largest ships that transit taking up the entire length of the lock chamber). At one point this ship sped up and was passing us on port, while another ship passed in the other direction – our advisor wanted us to keep pace with the Panamax because if we did not, his prop wash and wake would push us into the land on our starboard. As we did so, an additional tug came along and lined up perpendicular to the Panamax ship and directly on our bow. Our advisor told us to keep going, then he ran up on the bow yelling and radioing that tug to get out of the way. Orchestrated chaos.

Which brings up the only difficult time we had on transit. On the Atlantic side the three locks are contiguous, so you proceed out of one into the next. But on the Pacific side the first lock at Pedro Miguel is separated from the last two Miraflores locks by a small “lake”. The distance is so short that the advisors choose to keep small boats nested. We emerged from the Pedro Miguel lock and had to kill almost an hour just drifting about before the Miraflores locks would be ready for us. Meanwhile big ships were passing quietly by us and tugs were moving to and fro, sometimes at such speeds that result in six foot big wakes (their priority is keeping the ships in line in case of engine failures, not keeping sail boats safe).

Unfortunately when one such tug went racing past our rafted sailboats we were beam on to wake and the roll rocked our two boats in such a manner that they crashed together and then rolled apart. Our seven ton neighbor was no match for Kailani’s 27 tons and in one of the the violent rolls the cleat on the other boat’s stern tore off, ricocheting the line and cleat right at Harley’s head. Luckily, the cleat hitch was done properly, such that the cleat itself did not come apart from the line. It was one of those moments that could have been a lot worse. Many phone and radio calls were made by our advisor, with some emotion and loud “special Spanish”, and from that point forward, the tugs went slowly by without causing wakes.

And so we arrived in this marina yesterday at 5 pm, dropped off our line handlers, and tucked in for the night, exhausted from the heat and a very long day. Today we met with our agent, Tina McBride, to do our check out from Panama, and now have 48 hours to leave the country. Tina made all of the bureaucratic hoops and loops of customs, immigration and the Canal transit a breeze, and it was great to see her again, 13 years from our last transit with Kailani back in 2011. We enjoyed a final lunch out with her, shared some fun stories of sailing horrors and highlights, and we recommend her highly: panamacanaltransits.com

Our time on the Colon side was spent entirely at the marina, not venturing too far from the continuously running air conditioning on Kailani. Never at a loss for projects and repairs jobs, we used our lay days while we waited for our Canal transit date to get hauled and repaint the bottom with anti-fouling paint, re-pitch our prop, fix our generator head gasket, replace the main engine alternator belt and bracket, re-caulk our chain plates and install Starlink.

It is seriously hot and humid here in Panama, and Jen took advantage of the marina pool to swim laps most days. The marina itself was pretty good, only occasionally did the power stop or the water get turned off when they “ran out”, and our outdoor projects were always in conjunction to the serenading animal sounds from the surrounding jungle. We heard about a lovely jungle walk from the marina on which we could see sloths, monkeys, and all manner of jungle creatures, but once the afternoon rains settled in we ruled it out due to the mozzie / malaria factors. In addition, hearing howler monkeys from our slip was enough to make our spines shiver. (Unless you are already familiar with their horror movie inspired cries, look it up online and take a listen for yourselves.) Not for us this trip.

In addition to the surrounding natural jungle, Colon is also known for its very high human criminal jungle factor. The marina entry is controlled and guarded by the Panamanian military, and driving to and from the marina we pass through the old US military abandoned and burned out buildings. As such, our adventures in Colon were limited to frequent trips to provision on the marina-provided transport. We met many cruisers, made some new friends we hope to see down wind, and made the most of our time as we waited for our canal transit date.

In all, we shopped nine separate times, and now have aboard enough provisions to basically get us to New Zealand in November. While we will supplement with some staples like eggs, flour, sugar, rice and fresh fruit and vegetables in the islands between now and then, everything else needed has been acquired. What does seven months of provisions look like? Highlighting some of the quantities for items we are most queried about:

35 rolls of TP (or as we provision: 11,630 sheets)
35 pounds of rice, quinoa and couscous
32 pounds of flour
29 pounds of corn meal, sugars, cocoa powder, baking powder, yeast, premixes
63 pounds of pasta
140 cans of fruit, meat, vegetables
100 jars /containers of sauces, condiments, jams
22 pounds of peanut butter
29 pounds of dried beans
280 tortillas
6 gallons of oils & vinegars
63 pounds of powdered milk, yogurt, cheese
30 pounds of long-life and condensed milk
82 pounds of dried fruit, nuts, crackers, popcorn, chips, cookies
14 pounds of chocolate
57 pounds of frozen meat (chicken, ground beef & turkey, bacon, fish, sausage)
20 pounds of frozen veg & fruit (carrots, asparagus, green beans, spinach, berries, mangos)
19 pounds of butter
26 pounds of cheese
50 oranges, 36 apples, 6 lemons, 6 limes, 12 bananas
4 lbs tomatoes, 5 lbs potatoes, 6 cucumbers, 6 onions, 6 cabbages, garlic, ginger
72 eggs
90 cans of soda, tonic, beer
1,800 tea bags
1,200 servings of water flavor packets, electrolytes, cocoa, protein powder
10 pounds of coffee
20 bottles of wine, champagne, rum, gin
28 gallons cleaning liquids – vinegar, dish soap, hand soap, bleach, simple green
28 pounds of cleaning powders – laundry soap, oxi-clean, baking soda

Not an exhaustive list, but a pretty good percentage of the tonnage we have bought, shuttled aboard, decanted, and stowed. Inventory lists tell us where everything is since it all gets stuffed into lazarettes, closets, bilges and bunks. We have a fairly large freezer and fridge (although small by land standards) and keeping all of our fresh foods from spoiling is an art in and of itself, one which we’ve continually improved throughout our years of sailing.

So off we set within a matter of hours to cross the Pacific! Our first leg is to the Gambiers, the southeastern most islands in French Polynesia. This is a 4,000 nm long “jump” (about 4,400 statute miles on land, or the equivalent of driving from NYC to Los Angeles, figuring out you left your wallet back in Omaha and turning around to go pick it up, but doing it all at about 9 mph!). We anticipate a 22 day passage, with the first week being a bit of misery as we make our way through the doldrums to just south of the Galapagos Islands where we can pick up the trade winds. Then it’s sweet sailing. Or should be.

08 54 N 079 32 W

La Playita Marina

Panama City, Panama