Panama Canal- Lilly’s account

Lil was very keen to post something about her experience of the Panama Canal, so here it is: No photos for now- hoping I can add them in later.

PANAMA CANAL CROSSING

It’s been a big day. Mum, Murray and Dad got up at 4:00am to pick up our line handlers Paquita and Omar.

I woke up at 5:00 and did some reading whilst Mum made 8 breakfast burritos for the 8 people on board, including Ricaurte (or Rick, as I called him) our advisor, who we picked up at 5:30.

Either way we didn’t get to the locks until 7:00 but that gave me a lot of time to read. When we got in the locks we were positioned in the center with a power boat on our STARBOARD side (right side fore those who are not familiar with sailing terms PORT is left ) and a sailing boat on our PORT.

                         Sailing boat     US       power boat

                                       ______ _______ _______

                                   _______lock doors_________

We had a massive car carrier in front of us, so for the first three locks all we could see was its stern (back end). Once in the lock the doors were sealed and the water began coming in we rose to the next lock. We did the same process two more times until finally we were on the lake. This process took almost two hoers so it was good to be at the next stage. Once on the lake we began seeing some of the tankers that had come in a week or two days ago but still not traversed (Seb was in awe). I was very excited we were about to cross the second largest man mad lake in HISTORY!. We were hoping to see crocs but sadly we didn’t. One our way we had to moor for 30 minutes whilst we waited for a tanker to come by. After about two hours we arrived at the Pedro Miguel locks were we had to wait for another hoer and a half for the big car carrier that had been in front for the first three locks. When that came we took another two hours to get threw these locks but finally we were in the

                         PACIFIC!!!