Continued… Once we exited the lock, we were officially in Lake Gatun. We needed to cross the 26 miles (33 km) lake to reach the set of locks that would take us back down to sea level. Fifteen years ago, we had started our canal transit in the afternoon, spent the night in the lake, and finished the transit the next morning. While we weren’t exactly excited about starting at 0400 today, we preferred an early start over spending the night in the lake (primarily due to lack of bedding for everyone onboard).
Lake Gatun is an artificial lake 85 feet (26 meters) above sea level. When the French had first started building the canal, they were attempting to dig a trench through the mountains so that the entire canal was at sea level. Due to the mountains being solid rock, the propensity of the mudslides in the areas that were not rock, and the propensity for flooding in the rainy season, a trench wasn’t viable. The French company went bankrupt. When the Americans took over the canal, they re-engineered it to be a gravity-fed lock system powered by water from this artificial lake, which was created by damming up the Chagres River. At the time, it was the largest artificial lake in the world.
As soon as we untied, Christi started making breakfast for the crew. None of us had eaten before leaving, and everyone was happy to celebrate successfully navigating the most difficult part of the locks (going up) with a meal.
Eric had previously set a course through the canal, but the advisors weren’t happy with what Eric had set. They wanted him to run very close to the green buoys to leave lots of space for the faster traffic to pass us. This video was originally taken to document the vessels passing us.
But as you see in the video, Kim happened to catch the moment that Christi and Keith spotted birds fighting in mid-air over a fish. If you look very closely at the birds flying away, you can see the fish dangling from one of their mouths.
Anyways, back to navigation… even though Eric and the advisors were still “on duty,” they relaxed quite a bit.
There was a lot of laughing and joking in the pilot house.
The crew vacillated between sitting outside and inside.
Most of the crew members took small siestas at some point along the lake trek.
The ride through the jungle was beautiful. As noted above, there were birds everywhere, and so many varieties! Christi regrets not recording the constant choir of bird songs.
We passed the famous Barro Colorado island, which is a nature preserve and research island that the Smithsonian Institute has been running for over 100 years.
Since we needed to move fast to make our scheduled time to enter the Gatun Locks, Eric had been running Kosmos at 2100 RPM through the lake, and we were averaging about 7.5 knots, with a high of 7.7 knots. By noon, about 3.5 hours after we’d untied from the Pedro Miguel lock, we were getting close to the locks. Eric was proud that we were right on schedule. And no, we didn’t take the shortcut through Banana Cut as that is now closed.
However, much to everyone’s disappointment, there was a sudden schedule change. We were reassigned to go through with the sailboat that we’d gone up with. So instead of going into the Gatun Locks right away, we were told to hang out and wait for the sailboat to catch up to us. We tied to a giant mooring built for a large ship. We probably should have trained the crew on how to tie to a mooring…
Once tied up, Christi made sandwiches for the crew for lunch. We were warned that the advisors hate sandwiches, so we had tamales for the advisors. We all ate, and then relaxed while we waited on the sailboat to arrive. Eric got in a nap, which was much needed. Being tied to such a secure mooring and having eight people on watch really let Eric relax.
At around 1400, we were notified the sailboat was approaching. We untied from the mooring and drove over to the lock entrance.
Note: Thank you Mike, Kim, Brianna and Thaddeus for the photos and videos that you contributed to this post!