Sunday morning was spent practising safe winch handling and throwing lines.  Having been in the marina I had rather switched off, so when I ran the engine it was to find I needed to drain and change the racor fuel filter.  I then thought I had better check the navigation lights – only to find that the starboard light had gone open circuit!  I had to do a quick jury-rig to get it going.  Even so we set off after lunch in ample time to meet our scheduled rendezvous with our pilot who was due at 1600.  He actually arrived with a colleague under training at 1800.  The schedule had slipped and we were not due to go through the first lock until 1930.  There was much confusion because we had the impression that we were to go through in a nest, and indeed that is what our pilot was trying to negotiate with the two other pilots on board the other yachts.  On the run into the first Gatun lock the nest was on and off half a dozen times and it was only as we were approaching the lock gates that it was finally confirmed that we were to go through individually in centre chamber,  This meant that all four line handlers would be needed.

My concentration was tied to the tanker in the approach channel that I could almost touch on my port hand side.  At the same time my pilot was insisting on a speed over the ground to make good the timing into the lock.  All this was done with rather poor communication because his English or my understanding of his English was not very good.  Nevertheless, we arrived in the first chamber and as we approached all that we had read (probably too much) about needing hard-hats to protect us from the line-handlers’ monkeys proved to be nonsense.  The line-handlers threw their monkeys over the boom and foredeck with skill and they were easily captured and our warps attached.  Our reading had created an unwarranted level of concern.

We moved sedately under full control through all the Gatun locks into the lake and overcoming some language difficulty we subsequently moored to a buoy to await the arrival of the next pilot due at 0600.  It was very late by now and so by the time Sarah had served the coq-au-vin we were all exhausted.  I rarely see Sarah incandescent these days but her response to Doris’s “I don’t eat dark meat” was a moment to savour!

Well as luck would have it the next pilot arrived at about 0800 and was just brilliant. His English was excellent and his knowledge and enthusiasm for the canal and environment was very evident. We gently meandered through the Gatun Lake and saw our first sloth in the most unexpected fabulous virgin rain forest.  What a treat!  We joked that we would demand a refund if we didn‘t see an alligator.  I don’t think that any of us had fully appreciated that most of the canal is in fact a lake formed by flooding the rain forest.  The amazing thing is that you round a bend in the channel and come face to face with an enormous tanker or container ship.  By this time we had read ‘The Path between the Seas’ which had been recommended by Tony from ‘World Citizen’ who had a one time been a canal pilot.  The history of the building of the canal is fascinating – all the more so when you are in transit.

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