18. Wilting Military Cities and Howling Monkeys

The Panama Canal

It’s another overnight sail to reach Colon Harbor on the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal. We dock at Shelter Bay Marina, our last marina for many months, where we shall make arrangements to transit the canal. It’s a joy to meet many cruising friends there, Mary Constance and Fantasy1 among them. Each has made their way at their own pace, and now all are to transit the great canal in time for the best winds of the Pacific.

At first the marina building appears, long and low with wide verandahs. Then you start to notice similar buildings on the skyline, weedy bitumen roads into the rainforest, ancient fire hydrants – and realise that you have arrived in some kind of a ghost town. Asking questions, you find it’s not an ordinary or even small ghost town, but an immense, wilting, military city, a leftover from the US presence in Panama.

On our first foray out of the marina we find that lush dense jungle is fast smothering this dead military enclave which once housed many thousands of troops. Weeds grow on the footpaths and leaves fall unchecked over the concrete roads, collecting in deepening pools. The street signs are still there – Kennedy Way, Parson’s Loop – and one-way signs too, controlling the ghostly traffic, as well as churches, solid officers’ residences, stairways to nowhere where barracks have been removed. In the empty air it’s easy to imagine lines of soldiers, snapped to attention, whiffs of diesel as the jeeps roll by – basketball being played in off hours, jungle runs in the morning, the clatter of the mess rooms. Now, as the forest reclaims its own, the monkeys are taking over, yelping to each other and making impossibly long leaps high above us through the canopy. The chorus of birdcalls sways back and forth over our heads as we walk. We’re glad for them, these returning inhabitants.

There is little else here. On the other side of Colon Harbor, the city of Colon has but one attraction – the supermarkets, vital for our provisioning. For the rest, the people are poor, the streets are unkempt, unpainted, ugly and, we are warned, very dangerous. We go everywhere, as instructed, by taxi.

In the marina there’s a constant buzz of expectation in the air. Unless you’re prepared to round Cape Horn the ‘wrong way’, against the wind and currents, there’s no option – you must transit the Panama Canal! For most yachts, it’s a one-time only transit, and yachties are jittery. It’s not very surprising – we hear stories of people losing their legs or arms when ‘something goes wrong’ in a lock. But it’s also exciting – the Panama Canal, in company with the Empire State Building, the Channel Tunnel and the Golden Gate Bridge, is one of the Seven Modern Wonders of the World.

The idea of the canal was first mooted in the sixteenth century, but nothing practical was done about it until after gold was discovered in California. Then, in the late nineteenth century, the French started to try to dig a channel across the Panama Isthmus. There were two great difficulties to overcome – the difference in tidal range between the Pacific and the Atlantic, and the nature of the sandy soil that caused monstrous landslides. There were many failures. Not even Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal, succeeded. After many years of brainstorming, crushing defeats, political storms and great courage in the face of overwhelming odds, the canal was finally completed in 1914 by the Americans, but not without a dreadful cost in lives and misery.

The procedure today seems pretty simple. Rafted up with other boats and sharing a lock with a large ship, you enter three locks to take you up to the level of an artificial lake, sail across the lake for a few hours, then start your journey back down through three lock chambers and a small lake to emerge into the Pacific Ocean.

When the hour for Blackwattle’s crossing comes, we’re garlanded with black tyres on each side, and on board we have our ‘adviser’ from the Canal Authority, a quiet, serious man, and four extra friends from other yachts as line-handlers, a minimum number for all transiting yachts. These friends are coming with us to get experience of the canal, and they will return by land to Shelter Bay Marina to prepare for their own crossing.

Late afternoon we make for the first lock, spirits and adrenaline running high. We have by now rafted with another boat, and follow a very large ship. As the day disappears into night, the lights of the lock, so high above us, loom closer and closer, brighter and brighter, blinding our vision as we enter. Four lines are thrown from workmen high above on the lock edges, and, as instructed by the adviser, we dodge and hide to avoid being hit with the ‘monkey’s paw’, the iron ball at the end of the line. Once the lines are tied off, we two boats are tethered to the shore like Siamese twin bulls. The great steel gates close ominously behind us to make a black concrete prison.

The Panama Canal wasn’t built with sailing boats in mind. The water rushes in at an alarming rate, making the dark water boil beneath us. The two boats twist and lurch, trying to escape – they’re hating this strange treatment! The strong-muscled line-handlers struggle to keep the lines taut and the boats straight. The adviser shouts instructions to the helmsmen – ‘Power forward a little!’ ‘Reverse a little!’ In just a few minutes we have risen around eight metres, and can now peer over the top of the lock.

The canal workmen who hold our lines are now level with us. They start the long walk to the next lock, while we power forward, following the big ship and tethered like small puppies. The process is repeated twice more, and after what seems like a long time we emerge into the still blackness of Lake Gatun, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world. Here it is very quiet, our voices sound loud in the stillness of an ink-dark night. We are untethered from our twin and motor away, guided for about an hour by the adviser to an immense red buoy that we find with torches in the darkness. A launch appears out of the night to carry our adviser off, and we are abandoned for the night. Phew!

We know the worst is over, and the pleasure is to come. We eat and drink, and collapse into our bunks, a little tired from the physical work, but maybe more so from the tension of the unfamiliar challenge.

I wake slowly to plaintive yowling, and for an instant I don’t know where I am – it’s the sound of howler monkeys in the rainforest at the shore. In all the cruisers’ horror tales of the Panama Canal, no one mentioned how magnificently beautiful this journey could be. Daylight comes to show us we’re in glorious surroundings, with birds chattering in the trees and swooping by in long flights. We all splash in for a swim in the fresh lake water. Blackwattle must be surprised – she’s never been in fresh water! We don’t stay swimming for long – the water is dark and there are crocodiles along the muddy banks close by.

After a celebratory breakfast of bagels with cream cheese, eggs, smoked salmon and capers, we glide all morning through the lovely waters of the jungle-edged lake. Great goliaths of ships pass with their tugboats before and aft. We see the Smithsonian Wildlife Research Station on the shore, and even pass a US nuclear submarine, surrounded by guarding powerboats, their gun-holding inhabitants looking ferocious in flak jackets.

Early afternoon we raft up again with our fellow yacht to descend to the Pacific Ocean. We take the first downward lock alone, just the two yachts, and as the water drains there’s no slewing of the water – it’s so easy. We’re out of the lock quickly and across small Miraflores Lake to arrive at the final double chamber lock. Thunder is rolling and just as we are about to enter these two final locks, there’s a cloud burst and visibility is reduced to nil. The rock walls are too close for comfort. A suddenly blinded Skipper Ted is shouting that he can’t f&%@ing well see, and the whole crew is shouting contradictory instructions at him from the deck in the driving rain. Everyone is shouting and no one is listening. It’s Panama Pandemonium. The rain then clears as suddenly as it appeared and we enter the chamber safely after all, albeit with a dripping crew.

Beyond the two locks Blackwattle can see her first sight of the Pacific in the clearing air. I am sure that strong engine heart of hers just skipped a throb!

Soon it’s all over, and effortlessly we glide into the tidal (five-metre) waters of the Pacific. It’s time to open the champagne. We are extremely grateful to our international team of line-handlers, Englishman Simon from Steamy Windows, Belgian Steve from Wakalele and Australians Mike and Jos from Mary Constance.

We’ve reached our home ocean.