To transit the canal one goes up about 100 feet and down 100 feet, in a series of six locks, three up and you guessed it, three down. In between you travel across Gatun lake a man made lake from damming the Charges river.
The first step is to receive an "advisor". The advisor is working this job as a sideline, and is not interested in anything but the fastest possible trip and what food and drink you are serving. In the case of our Sunday advisor, he took it to another level, eating two breakfasts and two lunches, the last lunch while we were going through the locks.... advice was minimal. The advisor will also have a cell phone for being in constant contact with his girlfriend.
Step two is to raft up to another like minded cruiser boat. The advisors talking over their radio decide on the protocol and communicate this to the crews. As in the example below, the crew of at least one boat then promptly ignores the advisor and does what ever they want.
In our case we were to pass the "spring lines, loop end first, and receive bow and stern, loop end first". We were ready, pulled along side. The "professional crew" then shouted pass us you bow and stern????? Quick adjustment on by the Nikita crew and we pass bow and stern - loop first. Thus the receiving boat was to put the loop over their cleat and we would then pull tight and make fast. This worked at the stern, but at the bow, well this played differently, the professional crew promptly attached the line to a winch and began cranking with all their worth, our crew member with line in hand only tried to hold on to no avail. Splash goes our line. Nikita adjusts again, throwing the stern line, pulling away, circling and lining up another pass. This time successful.
Step three is to pull into the locks where the line handlers ashore toss a monkey fist. I was very excited about this prospect, having imagined for the last 10 days lots of one handed Panamanian monkeys(obviously taking more than one hand from a monkey would be cruel). You can imagine my disappointment to see a ball of rope instead of a hairy, smelly monkey hand, hit our boat. We were then suppose to attach the monkey fist and messenger line to our mooring line. The Nikita crew practiced bowlines all week! Well a crew member, who will remain nameless, except he goes by Tony, went to work on his bowline producing something similar to a rats nest. Our advisor looks at it, shrugs and says "haul away". The shore handler gets the line and loops it around the bollard, then goes to work for the next five minutes undoing Tony's rates nest.
The last step is properly tension the mooring lines as the water is either raised or lowered. The Nikita crew was again outstanding here, several times doing exactly the opposite. For example the advisor (in between meals and phone calls) would say something like "slack line" and we would tighten and cleat off. The advisor would look puzzled, mumble something in Spanish and then say "cleat off line", thus firmly regaining control of the situation.
So we made it without a scratch, proving that really about anyone can do this.
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