We had hoped to be able to do the transit in one day but knew we were at the mercy of the canal advisor and the schedule for other boats and ships going through that day. In the end, we were assigned to start at 5PM on Saturday, February 22. That meant spending the night on a mooring ball on Gatun Lake after the first several locks and then completing the transit the following day. Our experience was awesome but exhausting. We are so grateful for the crew of Beso del Viento! Fedi and Silke worked hard at their line handling duties while Stella and Sero did a great job with keeping things fun onboard with Dylan by capturing videos and pictures over the two days. They were all so tired when we said our good-byes but they still had smiles on their faces. Sunday night, they headed back to Shelter Bay Marina and we do not know when we will see them again. We will always cherish our time with them and we hope our lives bring us together again soon.

The following two videos show you a bit of the process we went through for each lock. We were rafted up to a catamaran for all of them. Going into each lock, we caught what was referred to as a ‘monkey fist’ which is like a baseball tied to the end of a messenger line. We then tied the messenger line through our big, blue lines and the canal personnel pulled them to shore. The messenger lines get untied so that they could attach our heavy, blue lines to a bollard. At that point it was up to us to keep the lines tight. Coordinating with the captain on the catamaran, Jas used our engine to assist in keeping us under control as we would move up or down in each lock.

It was 10:00 PM by the time we were secured to our mooring ball on Gatun Lake on that very windy Saturday night. I quickly fed our advisor and he hopped off the boat in the same way he jumped on – a pilot boat found us and picked him up. The rest of us then settled into a dinner of chicken pasta, coleslaw and fresh bread, followed of course by Stella’s yummy muffins.

By midnight we were all more than ready to tuck in for the night.

We were told that the next day’s advisor would arrive early morning. We were up early but, nope, the advisor did not arrive until about 10:00 AM so it was a late start to what was to again be a very long day. We did enjoy a spectacular morning on the lake though!

Sunday started off well, but, in sailing life nothing ever goes exactly as planned. Morning Stars decided we were all too relaxed so she chose to add some unwanted excitement to our day. A short distance before we entered the first Pacific side lock, we all of a sudden lost propulsion. 😲 Fortunately we were still a good distance from the lock and the current was carrying us along nicely. We also had a Marine Engineer Officer onboard! Alex quickly jumped into action as he assessed the situation with Jas. The decision was quickly made to raft back up to the catamaran. I also realized in those moments what our risks were. If we were not able to resolve the problem, a tow could cost us thousands and we’d lose out on our hefty deposit we paid to the canal. Taking deep breaths I had faith that Alex and Jas would figure things out and they did. They had discovered that the drive shaft had come out of the transmission. After about a half hour of work they got us back up and running. Unfortunately that issue also showed us that once on the Pacific side, we would need to do a haul out to address the situation properly.

As a family, the four of us have had some truly amazing adventures together. I was so thankful the timing lined up for Alex to have had that experience with us. He can’t be there for all of the Big Trip but I love it so much when he jumps on to join us as we go! 💞

During the first few weeks on the Pacific Ocean, we had some of the best sailing days of our lives! My next blog shares our times sailing to the beautiful, tropical and remote Islas de las Perlas with Alex. There we connected with our friends John and Debbie in Isla Contradora. I will also tell you about Blandine jumping onboard and then our time in San Carlos preparing for the biggest passage to date – crossing the Pacific Ocean!

The blog below talks about why we have decided to add the above Ko-fi button. 😊

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