By: Mark Tilden

Roseanne and I were fortunate enough to spend about a week in January with some of our dearest friends—John and Kathy Youngblood—on their beautiful Selene 53 "Mystic Moon" as they did their second transit of the Panama Canal. John and Kathy took Mystic Moon through the canal the first time in June of 2009, on their way to a 3-year circumnavigation of the Caribbean. They returned to the canal to transit back to the Pacific side on their way to the Galapagos, and then on to the roughly 2900-mile passage to the Marquesas. [Late update: The Youngblood's just arrived in the Galapagos Saturday morning, February 9!]

Map of the Panama Canal (courtesy of Wikipedia. Click on the map for a larger version)

John and Kathy had suggested that we read David McCullough's excellent book "The Path Between the Seas" before we arrived. The book provides a thorough and fascinating history of the building of the canal. I was glad that I'd taken the time to read all 698 pages because the story of this amazing human achievement has all of the elements of a great story: the birth of an idea, a great crisis when the dream begins to crumble, and then the redemption and restoration of the dream. While it's long, I'd highly recommend the book—even if you don't have the amazing opportunity we did to actually experience this bit of history.

Our adventure began when Roseanne and I flew to Panama City on January 2nd. We spent the night in a hotel in Panama City and met up with the cruiser's favorite driver "Roger", who drove us across the Isthmus to Shelter Bay marina, which is across Limon Bay from the city of Colon (see the map at left). We spent a couple of days preparing the boat and getting the plastic-wrapped tires that would act as our fenders, hung on Mystic Moon, ready for our transit.

Our agent told us that we needed to be anchored in Limon Bay near the mouth of the canal by 3 pm the afternoon that our transit began. A canal authority boat would ferry our "advisor" out to us, who would guide us through the transit. I was amazed at the skill of the canal boat drivers as they maneuvered the heavy approximately 50-foot steel launch deftly along side Mystic Moon, giving the advisor an easy step on to the cap rail without so much as touching Mystic Moon.

Looking back from the second Gatun Lock, we could see a ship entering behind us into the first lock.

Because our lock appointment with the Gatun locks on the Atlantic side was late in the afternoon, we expected to be spending the night in Lake Gatun just inside the three "flights" (i.e. three back-to-back lock chambers) of the Gatun locks. However, when our advisor stepped aboard, he indicated that the canal authority planned for us to make the entire trip that evening. Apparently they thought that Mystic Moon was capable of 15+ knots (which lead to lots of discussion aboard about whether the canal authority actually reads any of the detailed paperwork that is submitted beforehand). Fortunately, after a little bit of discussion with our advisor in English, and some dialog between our advisor and the canal authority on the radio in Spanish, the schedule was revised. We were to spend the night tied to a couple of huge anchor buoys just inside Lake Gatun.

Our transit was uneventful (in contrast to John and Kathy's experience going the opposite way in 2009…but that's another story), and by the time we passed through three locks into lake Gatun, it was just getting dark. Our advisor helped us find the large anchor buoys just off the main channel and we tied along side one of the two huge buoys. A few minutes later, our "lock mates", a Hylas 49' sailboat with Australian crew, tied on opposite side of the same eight-foot diameter buoy.

One of the women on the sailboat's crew almost immediately jumped off the stern for a cooling dip—which surprised me, since we'd already seen at least one large crocodile in the water! She didn't spend much time in the water and, fortunately, returned with all her limbs!

We spent the evening tied to a huge mooring buoy in Gatun lake (along with our Australian lock-mates).

The evening spent in Lake Gatun was one of the highlights for me. I was amazed that we were able to sit on the flybridge and eat a casual dinner with almost no mosquitos or other insects to disturb us. Considering all I'd read about the thousands of people who lost their lives to mosquito-born diseases during the canal construction, it was surreal to sit on the flybridge in the warm evening air with no bug repellent and virtually no bugs! We watched the lights on the passing ships as they follow the well-marked canal through this flooded jungle lake about 85 feet above sea level that was formed by damming the Chagras River.

The idea for the canal was born in the late 19th century—around 1870—by the same Frenchman who spearheaded the building of the Suez Canal. But initial attempts to build the canal met with frustration. The French were intent on building a sea-level canal (with no locks), but were beset by numerous issues ranging from torrential rains and slides to thousands of deaths from yellow fever and malaria. By 1893, the French company building the canal was bankrupt and many ordinary French citizens lost their life savings, which they invested in the promise of the canal.

The Culebra Cut (also known as the "Galliard Cut" was one of the greatest challenges of building the canal--essentially cutting a narrow canyon through the mountains the run through the middle of Panama. Here we are passing a ship that has just come through the Pedro Miguel locks on it's way through Lake Gatun to the Atlantic side

The Americans eventually purchased the assets of the bankrupt French company and resumed work on the canal in 1904. John Frank Stevens, who lead the American effort for the first several years, wisely recognized that to succeed, they needed to deal with the rampant disease and poor infrastructure that plagued the French effort. Based on research conducted by Dr. Walter Reed (after which the famous Army hospital was named), the root causes of Malaria and Yellow Fever were eventually understood and all but eliminated from the canal zone.

The building of the canal, that was finally completed by Americans in 1914 represents even to this day an amazing feet of endurance and ingenuity. While some incremental improvements have been made and parts of the channel, especially through the Culebra Cut (also known as "Gaillard cut") have been widened, much of the canal, and especially the locks themselves, remain largely unchanged from when they first opened. Reading McCullough's book made the experience so much richer as we passed through the Miraflores locks the afternoon of our second day, and I saw the date "1913" stamped in the wall of the lock control building.

At both ends of the canal, there was a flurry of activity with dozens of construction cranes visible working on a new parallel set of larger locks. The current locks are 110 feet wide and 1050 feet long, which won't accommodate some of the world's largest ships. With financial backing from several large shipping companies, Panama is working on building a new set of even larger locks, which will be 1400 feet long and 180 feet wide. The new locks are expected to be open for traffic in 2015.

The museum at the Miraflores Locks near Panama City is fascinating and has a nice restaurant that overlooks the Miraflores locks.

Our adventure ended all too quickly as we tied up in the La Playita Marina on the Pacific side. We returned the next day to the wonderful museum that overlooks the Miraflores locks and spent most of a day wandering through the museum and having lunch at the restaurant while watching one of the Windjammer cruise ships transit the locks just outside the windows. A couple of days later, we returned to the cold Seattle winter.

I don't know if we will ever have the opportunity to take our Selene "Koinonia" through the canal, but I count it a great blessing to have experienced the canal and seen this marvel of human creativity aboard Mystic Moon.

For more photos of our Panama canal passage, see the Tilden's album in the Selene Gallery.