TRANSITING

The question on our minds at the moment is when will we trasnit, i.e. go through the canal. There is a considerable waiting period for sailboats as there is no incentive to get us through the canal with any speed. We have been told if you pay for a pilot at a cost of $2500 you only have to wait three days, or if you pay for an agent roughly $800 you get through in less than a week, but as we have more time than money we wait. These prices are on top of the $600 dollars we pay to the canal authority to transit. We were first told our date was May 3rd, but that has since been pushed back to May 6. We are not pleased, as we had been told to call and see if we could move up and not back.

We are told that the back up is becuase there are a limited number of advisors to be on the sailboats and line tenders to walk the boats through. This seems a bit odd for in my limited experience in Panama there seem to be no shortage of individuals looking for work. These jobs while they may require some trainning do not involve skills along the lines of brain surgery or rocket science leaving me to wonder if we aren´t being held hostage. It would make sense to keep sailboats here for a number of weeks. We have to pay the yacht club to use their dinghy dock and then to pay for the priviledge of using their other serives. We all do a lot of shopping here so it does put some money into the Colon economy. It would not be hard for this whole process to be made much faster and effective. All it really does is add to the lore around the canal.

They make each boat have an advisor, which from our one transit experience is a bit excessive especially when the only thing they appear to do is contradict one another. Sailboats transiting southbound from the Caribbean to the Pacific begin the transit at night. You up lock through the Gatum locks, spend the night on Gatum Lake where one advisor leaves and the next morning another advisor arrives. This means that the three extera people you need as line tenders on your boat need to spend the night. This is no easy task for boats of our size. Luckily people are understanding of each other circumstances and everyone makes the best of it.

Our first transit was made more entertaining as one of the couples who came with us brought their three year old daughter. She was very cute and kept all the adults entertained. She even had the advisor playing with PlayDough, which makes me wonder just how necessary he was to have one board for the long stretch of motoring between the locks.

So now I will call and see if we can get our original date back. The only thing that makes this whole process less frustrating is that there are many yachts waiting with us and we have met some very nice people.

Please excuse this entry as I am writing this on a Spanish keyboard.