The Panama Canal and Panama City
We arrived in Panama in the afternoon two days before we were to go through the canal. We anchored just off a yacht club oustide a town on the Caribbean side called Colòn, very near the canal shipping lane and its near-steady stream of freighter traffic. The town itself has a very bad reputation; even the Lonely Planet guide, which is usually quite adventurous, says to stay away. A quote: "If you emerge from a bank, even in broad daylight, you will be mugged." The reason: it is the original shantytown that was created for the labourers after the canal was finished. They were supposed to be given jobs, but they never materialized. The town started off as a slum and is more or less unchanged.
One thing that I should note now is the temperature. The Caribbean during the summer is a very hot place. Ever since the BVIs, the temperature had stayed at about 30C with about as high humidity as possible. That is very hot. We were getting really tired of the constant heat; sleeping was very difficult for about 10 days because of the lack of cooling air of any sort during the night. Therefore, the primary goal of the entire crew in Colòn was to go to the yacht club and have a cold drink. But the main reason we stopped there was because we had to prepare the ship for passage through the canal. According to the rules, any ship going through cannot have any protruding features. Modern freighters and cruise ships are designed especially this way, but a tall ship is not. Therefore, we had to take the boats hanging on the side from the davits and place them on the deck. We also had to twist the yards fore-and-aft and even drop one end of the main yards to keep them inside the ship. That process took an entire day, all through manual labour.
One semi-amusing event had to do with the customs and immigration people. They didn't like the fact that the ship didn't have "approved" boarding gangways. A sailing ship doesn't have drop-down gangplanks with handrails and stairs, and they wouldn't board without them. The captain asked if he was supposed to modify the design of the ship for them, and they said they would go and "talk with the our agent". They were probably going to ask for a cash payment to make it "safer" for them to board, but they also insisted that we weld on a handrail. Our engineer did, and labelled it the "sissy bar".
Because of the debacle with the officials, we were given a less-than-favourable slot to enter the canal: 5 a.m. We were all awoken at 3:45 and got the ship ready for departure, loaded our pilot, and were underway.
The Panama Canal is really an amazing feat of engineering. For those interested, I recommend reading a history in a book or on the Internet, but an interesting detail is that it is completely dependent on the local rainforest for its operation. There are no pumps for moving water in and out of the locks, just gravity. The water that feeds the locks comes from a very large fresh-water lake (created by a dam) in the middle of the canal that is constantly fed from the rain. The entire economy of the country depends on the operation of the canal, and the canal depends on rain from the rainforest. Therefore, protection of the rainforest is imperative for the continuing existence of the country.
We went through the first 3 locks during dawn and then anchored in the lake for 3 hours to wait for the second pilot that would take us through the lake and through the 3 locks down to the Pacific. This was not unusual, as scheduling sometimes causes freighters to anchor there, and in fact there was a large container ship doing the same thing not too far away. However, modern frieghters have very good on-board facilities, so the crew doesn't immediately jump into the canal and have a fresh-water bath. It was quite incredible to be diving off the ship just after sunrise into swimming-pool-warm, clean, fresh water, followed by a climb back on deck to lather up with shampoo and then jump in again. Several people also took the opportunity to wash clothing.
The passage through the canal was fascinating, as you go through a large lake in the middle of a very dense rain-forest jungle. The wildlife in that area is supposed to be great. We didn't see much from the ship, but there are smaller tour boats that will go right along the shore, where you can see toucans and howler monkeys. People in Panama scoff at Costa Rica with its eco-tourist reputation, because Panama has at least as much, but only about one-tenth the tourists, and it is apparently much cheaper.
This last detail became very apparent when we came out of the canal into the Pacific and docked at a marina just outside Panama City. What a surprise: Panama is a large, thriving, and fascinating city. It is also a place where you can have a really inexpenisive holiday. The currency is the US dollar, and a good hotel will run you about $30 per night. Taxis within the city run a few dollars a ride, and there are many very good restaurants where you can have a feast for not much.
Shopping is amazing. Panama is a centre of clothing mass-production and they sell a lot of it there. Excellent quality t-shirts were $3, shorts $6, trousers $10, and good short-sleeved shirts also about $10.
We were in Panama City for 4 days, which allowed all of the crew members a full 2 days to explore the city. In such a short time, you can really only get a taste of a place, but it was a good introduction. I could recommend it as a travel destination, but go during the drier season when it is less humid!
7:45:27 PM 
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