Transiting The Panama Canal South to North
Published 13 years ago, updated 6 years ago
We transited the canal from the Pacific through to the Caribbean and there were some differences compared to coming through the other way.
Both the admeasurer visit and picking up the adviser happen in the vicinity of channel buoys 2-4. Between these and Flamenco Control is a good place if the weather’s OK.
We made it through in one day, but only just. Our adviser meet time was 0530, but he arrived at about 0600 and we had to make over 6 knots to get through the final lock before the cut off time of around 1530. It would have been easy for small delays to add up to miss the final slot, as it was the adviser persuaded a commercial ship to wait for us for 5 minutes so we could slip in front of them.
During this transit we went through the Miraflores locks rafted to launch, with a tug on the wall inside, then, in the Gatun locks, we had to wait against the wall and finished up centre lock with all four ropes in use.
Murray
SY Salamander
Related to following destinations: Panama
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