We left Vista Mar Marina and headed to Panama City. Upon arrival we contacted our agent, Erick Galvez to arrange our Panama Canal Transit. We arrived on Wednesday and he got us a slot in group 25c on Friday Morning. Unlike December 2023 where we had to wait about 2 weeks for a slot. We arranged to have 4 line handlers to assist. Our boat weighs 92 tons and so its not easy to move around in the locks so having these professionals was a good decision. They do this almost every day and know what to expect and can communicate with the land based line handlers. They arrived the evening before and slept on the boat.

We were all up at 4am as we had to pick up our pilot at 5:45 at the pilot station. Because of the length of Kariwa, we had to have a pilot instead of an advisor. Our pilot, Christian had worked for the same company as Captain albeit 25 years later so they had a lot to talk about. He also gave us a lot of interesting history about the canal and how the canal company was formed. 

We arrived at the Miraflores locks and were ready to enter by 7:30am. Ahead of us in our group was a small container ship, CMA CGM Green. The Miraflores locks have 2 chambers. Each chamber has double gates on the "down side" so that if a ship knocks the gate, not all the water will be lost. It takes about 10 minutes for the chamber to fill up and the water creates quite a strong swirl while filling. Next up was Pedro Miguel Lock which has only one chamber. Once we were out of that chamber, the pilot was replaced with a new pilot called Beto. It was also breakfast time. I made scrambled eggs with 18 eggs.

We now had to travel across Gatun lake to the final locks on the Atlantic side. A journey of about 21 miles. 

The group ahead of us consisted of a car carrier called Grand Eagle and a monohull called Searching for the Edge. The monohull was not able to keep up with the car carrier and therefore would have had to join our group and we would have top nest up with them. Captain was not happy about this. Our pilot then suggested we go full speed across the lake and catch up with Grand Eagle then we could be in the chambers with them. That was easy enough to do so we went into the chamber ahead of the towering car carrier, almost 16 stories high. Going down in the locks is a lot more gentle than going up.

By 14:30 we were sailing under the Puente Atlantico on the North side of Panama, and by 15:30 we had dropped the pilot, docked the boat and bid farewell to our line handlers, two of whom had done our previous transit with us.

That was another thrilling day on the water. Its a high octane day, filled with excitement, anxiety and a bit of stress. I enjoyed it a lot but was quite happy when we could step on land again. Time to relax, but only for two days before we hit the high seas again.