Long story short, it went fine - much more smoothly and incident-free than I ever expected. We had 2 professional line handlers who were terrific & helped out the rest of us (thanks, Mauricio and Ivan!), and one amateur line handler who was a real quick study (kudos to you, Anne!). GB rounded out our line handling crew, keepin' The Fox safe at the stern, port position. The requisite Canal Authority advisors oversaw the helmsperson (me) and our 4 line handlers very well. Thus, for the 12 hours we were actually underway and locking through, things were fine indeed. Our only problem was the combined total of 21 hours of waiting for the Canal Authority to locate an advisor, that made our little 12-hour transit into a hot, sweaty, 2-day affair. The transit details and procedural particulars are below the
fold for those who are interested. For the rest of you, here's a photo essay.
Day began auspiciously at the Balboa Yacht Club on the Pacific side, with a morning rainbow. (There were actually 2 rainbows but the second was too faint to capture.) After a few hours of waiting, we were assigned an advisor and we were off to the
2 sets of locks at Miraflores, where the observation decks are always full. We locked through here as a single vessel, which looks like this when the water's just beginning to fill the chamber.
Next up: the single lock at Pedro Miguel, where we tied up to a tour boat, to the great amusement of its passengers. Here, the upper deck folks are admiring the timeless beauty of The Fox and crew.
Due to all the delays during the day, we were unable to reach the Gatun Locks on the far side of the Culebra Cut and Gatun Lake, before they closed to small vessel traffic. So,we grabbed a freighter-size peg buoy just off of Dock 45, where they're doing construction for the next set of super-size locks for the mega-freighters that can't fit in the Canal. The next day more delays in finding an advisor kept us stuck to the peg buoy until late afternoon. But we got to lock through tied up to a tugboat, which is the coolest way to transit the Canal. Although the freighter locking through close behind us made me nervous.
We successfully completed our transit and still had enough time to scoot across Limon Bay to Shelter Bay Marina right at sunset. Had a sloppy landing in 25 knots of crosswinds but the only damage was to my pride. Safely offloaded our 2 pro line handlers, and so to bed. Awesome.
1. Make an appointment for the Canal Authority (ACP) admeasurer to inspect your boat, by visiting the ACP Admeasurer's office in Balboa at Building 729 on Avenida Arnulfo Arias Madrid, just before the intersection of Avenida Roosevelt. If you are on Avenida Madrid facing the large white portal of the Panama Port Company, Building 729 will be near the corner on your left. It's flying a big Panama flag out front. Admeasurer's office is on the ground floor; folks there speak English. You will complete a simple 1-page form and then be assigned an inspection date and receive a set of written instructions on what to do next. Our inspection date was on 2/15, some time between 0900 and 1500, 4 days after we visited the admeasurer's office on 2/11; that was the earliest possible date we could get.
2. The admeasurer will only inspect your vessel in 1 of 2 locations: in Marina Flamenco; or near the entrance to the La Playita anchorage, just outside of and between red buoys #2 and #4 of the Panama Canal entrance. Whichever locationn you choose (we chose the Playita location), get there about 1/2 hour before your appointment time as the admeasurer might arrive early - ours did. He was a very professional and congenial fellow, who was full of reassurance and good information. If you have any questions about your transit, now is a good time to ask them.
3. Once the admeasurer approves your vessel for transit he gives you a completed form to take to the Balboa Citibank to pay your transit fee. The Balboa Citibank is near the admeasurer's office, behind the parking lot that is across the street from the Balboa Theatre, in the same mini-mall as Niko Restaurant. For our 40-foot boat the transit fee was $1500 and IT MUST BE PAID IN FULL, IN CASH before Marine Traffic Control will assign you a transit date. Though you pay $1500 cash up font, within several days after an uneventful transit the ACP will refund $891 of this fee. We paid our fee on 2/15, immediately after finishing withthe admeasurer.
4. After 1800 hours on the date you pay Citibank the transit fee, you call Marine Traffic Control on the telephone (admeasurer's office includes this phone number in the instruction sheet they give you). We were assigned the earliest possible transit date: 2/19, 4 days after our call. However, Marine Traffic will NOT assign a transit time until the day before the assigned transit date - you must call back. It is a very good idea to keep calling Marine Traffic periodically, to confirm your assigned transit date, as small vessels like us tend to fall through the cracks very easily.
********** At this juncture, please refer to Item #9 below. **********
5. Now's the time to organize your line handlers. You need a minimum of 4 line handlers, plus a helmsperson, plus the ACP advisor who's required to guide your boat through the Canal. These people all need to be able to commit to AT LEAST 2 DAYS TO TRANSIT. Our actual transit time was only 12 hours, but we had long periods of delays and waiting (ACP's fault, not ours; more on that later) that totaled an additional 21 hours. So, yes: a 12-hour transit can easily require 2 days of crew time. Offloading crew in Colon or at Shelter Bay Marina might require even more time - so make sure your volunteer line handlers are willing to make that kind of time commitment; and for your professional line handlers, make sure you have enough cash on board to pay them in full when they complete the transit with you.
6. Professional line handlers: the rate that we negotiated with our 2 professional line handlers was $75 per person per day, PLUS a one-time $25 per person to cover return transportation to Balboa from Colon. Thus for 2 days we paid each of our line handlers $175 ($75 + $75 + $25). Balboa Yacht Club confirmed that the typical rate is $100 per person per day. We were very happy with our 2 line handlers - Mauricio Sanchez Ocaña (cell 6113-3195) is very experienced in Canal transits, English-fluent and acted as Mr. Scoutmaster to the rest of us; and Ivan (sorry, didn't catch his last name) (cell 6515-9249) was every bit as attentive to his work as Mauricio but speaks little English. We would recommend them to anyone who needs good line handlers.
7. For all your crew, have enough GOOD food and beverage aboard to keep everyone functioning at their best. The 6 of us aboard for our transit drank a case of bottled water in the first day alone. Have full water tanks, plus some extra bottled water as it's more portable for the crew going back and forth along the decks during a transit; and everyone appreciates some extra soft drinks chilled in the fridge. Have plenty of snacks available in addition to nice meals - and again, plan at least 2 days of meals for the number of crew aboard. Expect to have to improvise sleeping arrangements for your transit crew, considering where everyone will sleep if it rains overnight.
8. About those delays: the main problem with transiting the Canal in a small boat is that the ACP does not have enough advisors for the number of vessels wishing to transit the Canal. The shortage of advisors is especially acute during the high-traffic season when vessels transit the Canal on their way to the South Pacific. Advisors are ACP employees, but they have different full-time jobs at ACP and only work as advisors if and when they want some overtime pay. However, Marine Traffic assigns transit dates to vessels like us without regard as to whether or not an advisor is available on that date - they just scramble to find advisors as they need them. In our case, there were 2 other sailboats who had been assigned a transit date of 2/19 with us - but literally at the last minute, Marine Traffic cancelled the other 2 boats without explanation. We later learned that it had been because no advisor was available. For us, we eventually got underway with an advisor - but it took a couple of hours for ACP to locate one, so our assigned departure time of 0630 got pushed back to 0900 when the advisor finally boarded our boat.
We experienced yet another delay before entering the Pedro Miguel Locks, because ACP required us to wait another hour for a tour boat to enter the locks with us. This is understandably more economical for ACP, but certainly more frustrating and expensive for us, as with this second dealy it became clear that we could not accomplish a 1-day transit. We eventually tied up for the night to a commercial peg buoy at Dock 45 in Gatun Lake, about 2 miles from the Gatun Locks. Our advisor relayed to us the next day's start time from Marine Traffic: 0700, then he left in a pilot boat. A new advisor would be assigned to us the following morning.
Sadly, the next morning no advisor appeared. More telephone calls to Marine Traffic ensued, and they told us they were looking for an advisor to take us through the last set of locks at an assigned time of 1330. They did not secure another advisor for us until 1400, so Marine Traffic reassigned our lock-through time to 1530. Yep: another delay of 8-1/2 hours, and we were now locking through at the last available time for the day.
We did in fact make it through Gatun Locks and dropped off the advisor in the Flats anchorage (after another 1/2 hour wait for a pilot boat to come pick him up), leaving us just enough time to cross the bay and enter Shelter Bay Marina just after sunset. Our professional linehandlers had already used their cell phones to arrange their own transportation back home from Shelter Bay, so once we were safely tied up in the windy marina full of surge, we paid them their fees and wished one another well.
9. And the final thing we discovered after arriving in Shelter Bay Marina: WE FAILED TO GET A NATIONAL ZARPE FROM THE BALBOA PORT CAPTAIN, GIVING US AN EXIT FROM BALBOA AND AN ARRIVAL AT COLON. We never heard from anyone, anywhere in Panama, that travel from one port to another requires a national zarpe. Well, folks, you know it now. Transit the Canal without a national zarpe, and when you get to Colon you'll be paying a fine of $50 - unless the Colon port captain sends you back to Balboa to get one personally. So, get that exit zarpe from the Balboa port cpatain's office in Building 78 inside the big white portalof the Panama Port Company on Avenida Roosevelt at the intersection of Avenida Arnulfo Arias Madrid.
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It looks like the Yakima is a tad overloaded . . . although maybe it's the lower saltwater content in the canal. I like the crew members waving to you from the bow in the third picture, hopefully they aren't trying to signal the captain to stop!
Posted by: David McW | February 26, 2011 at 10:37 AM