Written by Mia:

Itchy Foot plans to transit the Panama Canal, the World’s Greatest Shortcut

TLDR:  We have a transit date for the 27th and should arrive in Panama City and the Pacific ocean on the 28th. There are webcams if you would like to follow our process and we’ll drop an update to Facebook when we are passing the main camera on the 28th. More details and links at the bottom of this post.

Since people started drawing maps of the area and realized there is only a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic and Pacific they have been scheming for ways to bridge it. The earliest on record was 1534 when a Spanish priest underestimated what could be done for the King of Spain with man power and shovels and picks and they eventually settled for a cobblestone road. Next came the Scots in 1690 but as you may have read in an earlier post, it was a lot harder than they expected and it almost bankrupt them. The pioneers of California gold rush preferred to take the Chagres river to Gamboa and walk on from there.

The French got serious in 1879 when Count Ferdinand de Lesseps went as far as to create a company to make it happen and the contract promised a percentage to Colombia but it was mismanaged. It was terribly over budget as well as the cause of considerable loss of life due to disease and accidents. They tried again in 1894 but were unable to obtain funds from the French government and then went bankrupt and at that point sold the Canal equipment and all the rights to the US government. The Colombian government got greedy and wanted more money for the land. At this point the state of Panama were frustrated with their government as well and made it clear to Roosevelt that 1) they were prepared to secede over the matter and 2) there were only 100 Colombian troops in the state. The citizens of the state of Panama proposed seceding and then making a treaty with the US government giving them sovereignty over the Canal Zone and in return the US would recognize the new Panamanian government and assign a minister to sign the treaty. In 1903 Panama declared independence and with 75,000 men and $400 million the Canal was completed. It opened August 15, 1914 and the 99 year lease was recently up and ownership passed to the Panamanian government.

The Canal is made up of a man made Gatun Lake and three locks on each side. When the Canal was built the Gatun Dam was the largest earthworks dam ever built, Gatun Lake was largest man made lake and the three sets of locks were the largest concrete structures in the world. On the Atlantic side the three locks are called the Gatun Locks collectively and raise a vessel a total of 26 meters. On the Pacific side are separate and are called Pedro Miguel Locks that lowers the vessel 9 meters and Miraflores Locks separated by an artificial lake. The gates at the Miraflores lock are the tallest due to the tidal variations of the Pacific. A vessel travels about 77 kilometers from one side to the other. The American Society of Engineers has called it one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Amazingly it has worked 24/7 for over 100 years without significant shutdowns.

Itchy Foot has been measured, we have filed our paperwork, paid the bank and have received confirmation of our date for February 27th. We thought our $1000 dollars was steep until we read that the average cargo ship pays half a million. We are anchored right near the Atlantic entrance and there are many ships an hour. An interesting bit of trivia is that we will traveling south (and slightly east) from the Atlantic to the Pacific rather than west!

The whole transit from Atlantic to Pacific should take two days, with an overnight stop in the lake in the middle. The normal timing is that we’ll leave Shelter Bay marina around lunchtime (Panama time – EST or 5 hours before London) on Tuesday the 27th. We will then anchor in ‘The Flats’ near Colon waiting for our advisor to arrive. Around 3pm we’ll head towards the locks and enter the first of the three upward locks, about 2 hours later we’ll complete our upward transit and be in tied alongside a giant mooring in the lake, and our advisor will leave.

The next morning (28th) we’ll get a new advisor and start the 4-5 hour motoro across the lake with the plan of arriving at the three downward locks early in the afternoon. Once again it’ll take an hour or so to get down the 80m to the Pacific ocean. Finally we drop off our advisor and our rented lines and fenders at a yacht club near Panama City.

At the start of the downward locks there is a webcam which you can find at www.pancanal.com.

http://www.pancanal.com/common/multimedia/webcams/viewer-flash/cam-miraflores-hi.html

This one shows the highest (first lock) of our downward trip. We will be passing this camera hopefully around early afternoon (Panama Time – EST) on the 28th of March. This should be about 7pm London time. It updates every few seconds. If anyone can get a screen shot we’d be super grateful!