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Lydia - Lydia's Blog. Shelter Bay Panama Canal zone. 27-29 Jan 16



Wednesday 27 Jan 16.

At 6pm the previous evening we weighed anchor from Lemon Cays in the San Blas Islands and motor-sailed out of the San Blas Islands then followed the Panamanian shore some miles off using the detailed electronic charts which proved most effective. The wind at 15 knots was on our quarter which gave Lydia a somewhat corkscrewing motion at times and thus difficult to sleep. We could see the harbour lights of small ports along the coast and rather wished we had had the time to go into Porto Bello, one of the main ports used by the Spanish from which to export their treasure from Peru in the 16th and 17th centuries using the famous Camino Real road from Panama. As the grey dawn came up we found ourselves about 10 miles off the entrance to the Panama Canal. Some score or so of large ghostly tankers and container ships waiting for their turn to enter the Canal slowly materialised. We could hear them on the radio calling in to Canal Control that they had arrived at the 8 mile point and would anchor and wait to be called forward.

The entrance to the start of the Panama Canal is marked by a long artificial breakwater of rocks with an entrance of about a quarter of a mile wide. To the left we could make out the busy port city of Colon with its large container port. Apparently some container ships off load their containers at Colon which are then taken about 50 mile by rail across the isthmus to Panama where they are then loaded on waiting container ships on the other side and vice versa. Once we had cleared the breakwater we turned hard to starboard inside the breakwater where we could see the forest of yachts marking the marina of Shelter Bay. In fact the marina is part of the now disused large American Army base which was originally built in 1908 to guard the entrance to the Canal which the US were then building. It was then called Fort Sherman and with the large barrack blocks, airstrip and many married  quarters now abandoned but once housed 1000 or more military personnel. In WW2 and  during the Viet Nam war it was one of the primary US Jungle Warfare schools and on further acquaintence we could see why. On arrival we secured alongside a fuel barge to refuel before finally moving onto our finger berth and for most of us falling thankfully to sleep for a couple of hours. The facilities were good with very good washing facilites, and a restaurant that we managed to eat all the way through their menu in the 5 days we were there. In the evening I contacted the crew of Belafonte whose skipper Tim was an expert on the internet since we could not get ours to work on the marina's WiFi. It turned out the marina's WiFi was too weak and overloaded with all our ARC yachts so the only thing to do was to wait until most had gone to bed. In the meantime we had several rounds of shangria drinks with them which appear innocuous fruit drinks but have quite a kick afterwards! Matthew moved off Lydia that evening to a smart hotel room in the marina as he was returning to England for his son's wedding before we went into the Canal proper on 31 Jan.


Thursday 28 Jan,

After a relaxed morning we caught a bus have a tour the Gatun Locks, the three vast locks which lift ships up from the Caribbean into the Gatun Lake. Bit of history here so skip it if it is not of interest.

In 1513 Balboa discovered (as far as Europeans are concerned) the Southern Sea of Pacific. In 1527 two Spanish sailors found that the Chargres River was navigable for up to 50 miles inland from it mouth near what is now the start of the Panama Canal. The far sighted Charles V of Spain in 1534  decreed that exploration should take place to discover a quicker route across the isthmus so the gold from Peru could be bought to Spain as rapidly as possible. At the navigable end of the Chargres River the town of Cruces was founded and 30 kms of paved road known as the Camino de Cruces was laid by the Spanish from there to Panama. The alternative longer land route across the isthmus was the Camino Real from Panama to Porto Bello. Fast forwarding to the 19th century, following de Lessups' success with the Suez Canal, the French in 1878 signed a treaty with Colombia of which Panama was then a province, to build a canal across the isthmus. Work began in 1880 and in 1884 17,000 Jamaicans were recruited to do the huge labour involved. The French plan was a straight canal with no locks. However, beyond the navigable part of the Chargres River they had to cut this huge canal straight through mountainous jungle primarily at what became known as the Culebra Cut. 

Malaria, yellow fever and torrential rains which could destroy months of digging in a day brought the project to a standstill by 1890. A new French company was formed by 1894 but by then there had been  22,000 deaths resulting from the hard labour involved. 60 million meters of earth had been removed to form the Culebra Cut, many bridges, railways and navigation channels had been dug but by the turn of the century the French had all but given up. Four factors caused the French failure, first, very difficult terrain, second, a bad plan, third, desease and finally corruption.

At this stage in 1903 Panama gained its independence from Colombia supported by the US who a fortnight later signed a treaty giving the US a stretch of territory five miles either side of the proposed canal which Theodore Rosevelt guaranteed to build open to all ships of all nations. The American plan was much more practical. They dammed the Chargres River thereby creating the largest artifical lake (the Gatun Lake) in the world prior to the Aswan Dam.

They built three locks (the Gatun Locks) to bring up the ships from the Carribean to the Lake now many metres above sea level. The ships then crossed this vast lake following carefully dredged channels to the famous Culebra Cut where the French had expended so much labour in carving a way through the mountainous jungle. After the narrow Cut ships moved to the first of the 3 locks to lower them down to the Pacific. The first was the Pedro Miguel lock which opens onto the small artificially created Miraflores Lake and then down through the two Miraflores Locks and out under the Bridge of the Americas to the Pacific. Sluice gates on the Gatun Lake allowed the water lost in locking down ships to the Caribbean or Pacific to be made up by the water still flowing into the Lake from the Chargres River.

So much for the Plan. The other major problem of desease was tackled by US Drs Walter Read and William Gorgas who had great experience in combatting malaria and yellow fever in Cuba set about erradicating the problems in the Canal Zone by such things as paving all the streets to stop pools of water where mosquitos could breed and by spraying oil on any pools of stagnant water. The canal nearly 80km long was finally completed and the first ship the Ancon transitted the Canal on 15 August 1914. End of history lesson!

At the Gatun Locks we saw vast container ships entering the locks under their own power but controlled by 4 electric "mules" on tracks on the sides of the locks whose purpose was partly to control the ship's way forward but equally to keep the ship dead in the centre of the lock and thus to ensure the ship never hit the sides of the locks. A Panamax ship has only 60cm on either side of the lock for clearance. Two mules (or sometimes 4) with wire hausers are attached to the ship bow and stern to keep her straight and totally under control. The pilot on the bridge is in constant contact with the mule drivers. It takes the average ship about an hour and a half to negotiate all three locks going up to the Gatun Lake. The current locks are 330m long by 33.5m wide. About 40 ships a day make the transit East to West or West to East using the Gatun Lake to anchor while waiting to be called forward to go East or West. The average transit time from ocean to ocean is 24 hours. The Canal is a 24/7 operation 365 days a year. Currently Panama is building larger  locks alongside the Gatun and Miraflores Locks which possibly may open by 2017. They are designed to take Super Panamax ships currently expected to be 10 a day. These new locks which save 60% of the water used measure 427m long and 55m wide. It was truly fascinating watching the whole operation.


Friday 29 Jan 16.

Steve, Andrew and I had a conflab on provisioning. None of us are experts on provisioning a yacht for a passage of 70 days and only wish our wives were here to provide ever sensible and practical advice! None of us are fluent Spanish speakers and surprisingly most of the supermarket staff appeared to have no English. 

There is one thing about it that concentrates our minds, we shall be eating (or not eating) our mistakes in the days and weeks to come. We took a taxi to the vast supermarket in Colon. It took us two and half hours to fill 5 shopping trolleys. The 2 check out packers could not believe it and fell about  laughing. They were very good and managed to get us a taxi who then rang a friend with his taxi as we needed  two to get us and our vast amount of stores back to our marina. Our new crew member Alvaro had arrived while we were at the supermarket and oh how we wished we had his expertise. Alvaro is the 22yr  old son of a Spanish friend from Madrid of skipper Donald. He has just finished university and is planning to study furniture design in Denmark after our voyage.

Of course once the provisions were on the jetty the next intriguing challenge was to find spaces on Lydia for everything. It took ages to stow but we had a deadline as we had  somewhat rashly invited the crew of Belafonte for "Rom Ponches" at 6.30. Fortunately they we also having  challenges stowing but when they all arrived we drank copious quantities of Matthew's specially prepared "Rom Ponches". Matthew is a dangerous man.

You might think his rum punches consist of a third of rum and two thirds fruit punch. However it is the other way round so we have been continually buying more rum than punch! A good time  was has by all which pushed the experience of provisioning into blissful oblivion and so to bed.

With best wishes from all on Lydia,
Nigel


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