Panama Canal with Varuna

Varuna's Line-Handlers  - The American Bridge over the canal.

Well, it's been busy since our last blog, Nancy is in Reno helping Denielle with our new grandson Bodhi Kai Erwin born Friday July 22nd. I've been aboard Windfall waiting...and waiting!

    In the meantime, the crew of SOMF Jerry and Lauren, and I were invited by our friends Mitch and Anne (Varuna) to go to Panama and help them bring their boat through the Panama Canal! A date was set and confirmed, so with a couple bus and taxi rides, we found ourselves at a anchorage on the Pacific side of the canal and at 6am the next morning we were on our way.

In the canal with Varuna, a tugboat, and that big ship coming behind us.

    What a great experience this was for us all, especially since we will be taking Windfall through the Panama Canal sometime near the end of this year. 

    I learned a lot of how things are done in (and at) the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal has three sets of locks – Gatun, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores – each of which has two lanes. These locks serve as lifts, elevating vessels 85 feet above sea level from the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans to Gatun Lake.

   There are new locks being built right now and expected to open in 2014 to accommodate the newer "Post Pana-Max Ships", as of now the canal can only take "Pana-Max"container ships (designed for the width of the canal) carrying about 4000 containers aboard. Though this may sound like a lot of containers aboard one ship, they have "Post Pana-Max" Ships that carry 10,000 containers! While we were motoring to the first set of locks, we were fortunate to see one of these Pana-Max...WOW! Huge doesn't even begin to describe the size of one of these big ships and they are way too big (width) to fit into the current canal. The ship unloads the 10,000 containers, place them on the Panama Canal Railroad and transport the containers  to the opposite side of the canal...where they are unloaded from the train and placed back on other ships waiting to make the destination complete.

You see that huge ship in the lock ahead and BELOW us?

    With the new canal locks opening in 2014 this will increase shipping through the canal and help reduce shipping costs....and if you're wondering it's about $400,000 to take one of the big ships through the canal.... The cost for Varuna was about $700 including an

    We were hoping to make it all the way through the 48 mile long canal in one day, but as with all good plans we couldn't make the time to the next locks on the Caribbean side. So, we were able to spend the night in Lake Gatun which is between the Pacific side and Caribbean side. Lake Gatun at one time was made with the worlds largest dam...and Lake Gatun was also the largest man-made lake in the world. 
    Shelter Bay Marina, on the Caribbean side, has a wonderful pool that we jumped into as quickly as possible. The city of Colon is just across the bay, but to get there must be timed with the canal bridge...which can be a 2 hour wait. There is a shuttle bus 4 days a week to Colon, but a Taxi can cost $80 each way to Panama City.
    And, to top things off, we were invited to an exploration group searching for Captain Morgan's ship that is sunken in a nearby bay...somewhere. We were treated to a nice presentation and history of Captain Morgan and his 33 ships that were entering the harbor when the Captain's ship hit a rock and sunk. Of course the exploration is sponsored by Captain Morgan Rum....which was not available at the bar. Hmmmm.
    Well, time to get back to Windfall and get ready to fly to Reno to see Nancy and our new Grandson Bodhi!! We'll be in the US for a month visiting Jeff and Denielle in Reno, my Mom in Oregon, and lastly Nancy's family in Florida. We must have Windfall out of Costa Rica by August 23rd.....Panama we'll be on our way soon!