Home » Panama » DYED IN THE WOOL - AND THE 15 CAN TRANSIT…

Or is that……died in the wool…..some kinky kiwi sexual asphyxiation fetish….and what inspired that thought?…..I'm just recovering from the 15 can transit, yes, I’ve pulled it off, right thru’ the far canal in a yacht!

Where were we?…..I think leaving Bogota was last up, I’m still trying to summarise the last 6 months in south America, so hard to get my thoughts aligned, so much was there.

DYED IN THE WOOL - AND THE 15 CAN TRANSIT…

Bill Shum
2006-08-21 17:16:49

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with the docks, remarkably quickly, the though time is less than 20 minutes, as soon as we are up the giant car carrier is underway, its like a flooding river for us behind, we have to untie and get free of the other yacht, the current is tossing us about, we are trying to separate the boats, Todd’s doing a fantastic job, and he has all the responsibility, I’m reassured by his competency, wrestling us free and chasing after our huge lumbering partner, thu’ into the next lock where we repeat the process, I see it’s beer o’clock and start hooking into the baby coffin…this is an emotional moment…right in your genuine panama canal, in the footsteps (wake?) of a million boats cutting thru’ from Pacific to Atlantic. As we went thru’ other ships were going beside us in the other, parallel locks, the direction changes on demand, back or forward, up or down, just keep churning them through.

So, three locks up and out into the channel and on to the endless lake that provides the water for the locks at both ends, for all the techo detail I’m sure it’s googlable, in fact the rate of charges is probably there too, for the yachts its about $500 bucks I believe.

Hey, rain forest jungle, reserved land, wild animals along the banks, fairly tinny little lights, like street lights in a poor neighbourhood, stuck on shaky poles along the rocky shoreline, slimy cable draped from one to the next, does this really show these billion tonne mega ships where the rocks are? And then to the lake, more strung out than wide, we follow lines of green and red buoys that hopefully mark the deepest channel, it’s a pretty tight track, not a lot of room for those big babies to manoeuvre.

Then the narrowest part, lots of inactivity, but lots of signs of earthworks in progress, maybe it’s (another) holiday…lots of explosives, heavy duty equipment, a billion dollar widening project.

Then the rain…..now when I say ‘rain’ ...