Panama Canal Transit

Finally, several small mountains of paperwork behind us, we set off for our much-anticipated transit of the Panama Canal. The protocol is pretty simple for pleasure boats. We muster in an anchorage called "the flats" just outside the Atlantic entrance to the canal to await an advisor, who is an official representative of the Canal and who joins us for the transit. From there it's a 2-day event: passing through the Gatun locks on the first evening and into Lake Gatun; then a 27-mile motor across the lake on day 2 to exit through the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks into the Pacific.

Three locks up, three locks down. No worries, as long as you don't mind being cheek to jowl with enormous freighters and steering through some tight spaces. Luckily, Lani was our skipper and we had four line handlers on board. So, my job was just to drink beer and eat popcorn.

Lani at the helm in the first lock

Our overly cautious agent advised us to anchor on the flats at 1 pm, even though our transit time wasn't until 5 pm. We did as we were told; but our advisor didn't even show until 8:30. We entered the first lock at 10 pm.

There are two options for transiting the locks. One is to create a raft with 1 or 2 other yachts, and then tie the four corners of the raft up to the walls with massive ropes, keeping the raft in the center of the lock. This is what we did when we crewed on Remi De, a friend's boat, a week prior in order to gain experience. It's a bit tricky to keep the raft together.

Option 2 is to tie up to a larger boat, like a ferry, which itself just snugs alongside one side of the lock. This is a far easier option. Lucky for us, this is how it played out on day one when a 100-year-old wooden tour boat called the Islamorada that was supposedly once owned by Al Capone and Andrew Carnegie (not at the same time) entered the locks. They pulled up to the side, our friends on Tehani-Li, a fifty-foot monohull, pulled alongside, and we tied up to Tehani Li.

Doors closing in the second lock

View from the second Gatun lock, showing how these form "steps" up into Lake Gatun

We finally exited out of the third lock into Lake Gatun at close to midnight. We tied up to a mooring near the locks and collapsed into bed. 5 hrs later, a rapping on the hull and our advisor for the second day, Ivan, came aboard. Get rolling, he said. We had an early exit on the other side.

Lake Gatun sits much higher than the Atlantic or Pacific, requiring a series of locks to step up and down on the transit.

Our motor through the lake was relatively uneventful—hot and lazy, with one crocodile spotted and numerous huge ships passing by. The passage is 27 nautical miles, about half of which is in the lake and half is in a narrow canal cut over a hundred years ago through the mountains that sit in the middle of the Isthmus.

The Canal is a constant work in process. Here's some dredging work, and a huge ship.

To transit the canal you have to have four adults on board, plus a fifth designated as skipper. Lani, who normally steers when we anchor or come into a dock, took the helm for the entire transit. We were nervous that the male advisors wouldn't take her seriously, but we lucked out with two great advisors who were very supportive, smart, and capable.

We were also lucky that one of our line handlers was Bruce Neville from Remi De, who brought along his daughter Remi. The girls broke up the monotony of it all with a marionette show on the deck in the middle of the Pedro Miguel lock.

This is a good description of the kind of activity we encountered throughout the canal. This is just before the last two locks, called the Miraflores locks. We had to drift close to the edge of the canal while this large freighter came out with tugs and sidled up to a fueling station. Then, we slipped into the lock behind it.

Nervewracking at first, you eventually get accustomed to it.

The last lock is the most dangerous, as a pretty serious current is always whipping out of it into the Pacific. Here, Lani had to put on display her awesome prowess at the helm, gunning Dafne out into the Pacific and into the next stage of our adventures. Well done.

Chilling in the Tobago Cays

The Tobago Cays lay about halfway down (or up) the Grenadine island chain, and conveniently mark (more or less) the southern boundary of the hurricane belt, as far as U.S. insurance underwriters are concerned. If Dafne gets damaged in a "named" storm anywhere north of 12 degrees 40 minutes north we will not be covered. This line runs more or less right through this little group of islands. So, since June 1, the official start of the hurricane season, I keep waking up at night thinking, "Jesus, we have to get to the Tobago Cays."

The other big draw that pulls up to 200 boats into this labyrinth of uninhabited islets ringed by a horseshoe reef, is that this is one of the more beautiful, nature-filled anchorages in this part of the Caribbean and has been set aside as a marine nature reserve. Lucky for us July is the low season; so when we arrived the other day there were only 20 other boats, mostly huddled around the central island—Baradel—which has been marked out as a sea turtle sanctuary.

Since Dafne only draws 3'9" (1.15m) we are able to pull into shallow areas, such as this 6-foot-deep section of sand behind the reef.

After a ho-hum experience in Bequia, which I'd extolled endlessly as the perfect anchorage to the rest of the crew, I've learned my lesson about talking a place up. Beyond a few words about seeing turtles I didn't make a lot of promises to the girls. As a result, they were overjoyed when we anchored in six feet of water over pure sand, just behind the reef, and nearly bumped nose-to-nose with a turtle when we jumped over to check the anchor. And two large rays.

Pulling Laurel, our dinghy, up on Baradel Cay. A moment later a baby reef shark came swimming along just a foot from the beach. The girls were thrilled.

There's no internet signal in the Cays, so Lani and I purposefully unplugged for a short vacation to focus on more important things like snorkeling.

After a little experimentation in Bequia I've learned that we can generate about 10% more electricity if we push the boom to one side or another. As well after several promises, I finally made good on my commitment to rig up a swing. As a result, just hanging on Dafne proved plenty of fun for most of a day. 

Cleo, tentative at first, got into the swing of things quickly.

Stella, ecstatic, now asks me to rig this daily.

Ok, I loved it too.

We connected again with Natalie and Michael, a German couple aboard Marlin, and their kids Lena and Maya, who were both born on the boat. They were in a more serious school routine than us, but also took off three days to simply relax and enjoy the surroundings.

We picnicked one afternoon on picture-perfect Jamesby Island. Best nap ever under this palm.

Our kids get along marvelously with Lena and Maya. They spent three hours creating a whole world (incomprehensible to me) on the beach, with complex rules and roles—half drama, half game. Completely inspiring.

Petit Bateau nearby hosts a large population of iguanas (and no French children's clothes).

Starfruit—called Five Fingers in these islands—proves a tasty lunch for my friend.

We spent one afternoon snorkeling around Baradel, the turtle sanctuary, which was within swimming distance of Dafne. Within minutes we encountered three large hawksbill turtles in about ten feet of water. They were totally preoccupied with munching the sea bed and let us swim with them for over 40 minutes. Our underwater video camera has kicked the bucket after just a month of use; so, we didn't get any footage. But take my word, it was completely magical, especially when a turtle turns around to check you out and meet eye-to-eye. Encounters with wild animals like this leave me completely stunned.

A few days later Jade worked on a series of turtle sketches, which I hope she'll post here soon.

Queen of the Tobago Cays. Stand back.

Stella fell into a great rhythm.

We lucked into a full moon during our visit. Well, "luck" should perhaps be qualified. The moon raised the high tides more substantially over the reef, which made the evenings—in particular one night when it blew 22-knots constantly—rolly and rocky in the anchorage. But it made for beautiful cocktail hours when we could hang out on the trampoline and watch the moon rise.

A short dance performance on the bow. The reef is just perceptible in the background (breaking waves to the left), while moon is up on the right.

Passage Making

In sailing parlance a "passage" is any time when you move from one place to another across open water. When you're hugging the coast and cruising from port to port you're not really passage-making. But, when you hop from one island to the next in the Leeward and Windward Islands of the Caribbean, you're crossing open water. The waves rolling your boat from one side to another, and the powerful squalls that come up periodically, are all gifts from Africa sent with love 4000 nautical miles across the open Atlantic to passage makers.

It's easy to screw up on a passage. So, sailors spend a good amount of time passage planning. The main focus is finding the right weather window when the big picture—that is, the predictable path of large weather systems—looks good. There's no predicting small, localized, but potentially powerful squalls. They just happen. Get used to it.

I've been using two main websites to do our passage planning since we left St. Martin. The first is Ralph's Tropical Weather, run by an amateur weather buff in Florida who's been tracking hurricanes for the last 30 years. The second is Passage Weather, which pulls together data from a wide range of sources to compile relatively real time reports and accurate forecasts of wind speeds and wave heights—the two big concerns for sailing. Passage Weather's wind info is mostly from the GFS (Global Forecast Service).

Ralph gives the big picture. Here is it before our run from Antigua to Deshaies, Guadeloupe.

Ralph basically takes a satellite image from Intellicast and overlays his own analysis. His focus is mostly on the tropical waves from which tropical storms and hurricanes hatch that roll off the African shore and spin across the Atlantic.

The image above, from July 4, shows a tropical wave that's just passed us (3) and two more heading our way (1 & 2). The one that passed had brought slightly higher than normal winds and some rain. So, we look at this, partly, in order to time our passages between the waves.

But, also, we're looking out for hurricanes as Dafne is still within the hurricane zone and, technically speaking, this is hurricane season. As it ended up, two days later, when we arrived in Deshaies, number 2 had evolved into a numbered "invest," which is the next step from wave to storm. And, by the 8th, it had become Tropical Storm Chantal. But more on that later.

Here is a snapshot from Passage Weather of the winds predicted for our sail to Guadeloupe.

The arrows point in the direction of the wind (mostly east, or slightly north of east), while the tails on them describe wind speed. A long tail stands for 10 knots of wind, a short for 5. Guadeloupe is the butterfly-looking island just to the lower right of center of the chart. Antigua is the round blob north-northwest of it. As you can see, for the whole trip we would be sailing in 15 knots of wind.

The colors represent trending. The darker blue that covers most of the chart represent trends between 15-20 knots. So while the wind might be mostly 15 knots, there would be times of 20 knots on the trip. For us, we LOVE 15 knots. Dafne moves nicely, and it's a comfortable ride. 20 is ok. But, we prefer 15 or so. The lighter blue patch that we would sail into halfway along represents a trending toward lighter winds, 10-15 knots. We liked that. It might take a little longer to get to our destination, but we'll stay dry and free of seasickness, and have more fun.

This chart also shows us that the winds would be coming from 60 degrees off our bow all they way, which is a bit close. 90 degrees off the bow—called a "reach"—is ideal.

In the chart below, we see wave heights, which is our second concern. Big waves = uncomfortable sailing, especially when we're sailing closer into the waves. Here's it's all about color. The darker the blue, the higher the waves. We were expecting 1-2 meter waves (3-6 feet) all the way to Guadeloupe, and mostly from the side (or, "beam"). Not bad.

And, lastly, Passage Weather also shows us precipitation, which isn't a big deal in terms of safety, though a lot of rain can reduce visibility. Precipitation often means squalls, which are very localized areas of intense wind. On this passage, in fact, we rain into two squalls, each of which packed about 25-30 knots of wind. The first only lasted 15 minutes, but the second lasted 45 minutes and brought our visibility down to less than a quarter mile. It was somewhat similar to sailing in fog in New England, and a little freaky.

Everything in sailing weather is pegged to UTC, or universal, time. UTC, also sometimes called Z or "zulu," is equivalent to Greenwich Mean Time with no daylight savings calculated. You'll see in each of these Passage Weather charts the time is 09 UTC. In the Lesser Antilles in the summer we're four hours behind UTC. We were planning a morning departure from Antigua so I looked mostly at the 5 am, or 0900 UTC, chart.

In the precipitation chart above we can see a cell of significant rain moving into Guadeloupe at our departure. I wrongly assumed that this would move quickly and clear out before we got that far—about 7 hours into our trip. But, instead we hit it and entered Deshaies in the rain.

Regardless, we had one of our best sails yet, as evidenced by the girls getting more relaxed and at home. Here they are tethered in on the trampoline between the two hulls, riding the waves as we bounce along in 18 knots of wind at nearly 8 knots of boat speed. Gotta love catamarans.

Tropical Birthday

Stella turned eleven Saturday. That and the fact that it was the weekend, we decided to take a break from boat chores and staying up on work. She decided we should all go visit the Coralita littoral preserve, part of the St. Martin Nature Reserve, just a mile up the coast from Oyster Pond.

Coralita is a shallow shelf wedged between two rocks where the Atlantic surf spreads out in long, flat waves across a bed of sea urchins. Calvin, the self-proclaimed "Sea Urchin Man," presides over the beach, where he's gathered a small collection of live animals (conchs, sea urchins, sea stars) and set up a series of cairn-like mounds of shells and coral. Presumably this is art.

We waded out to Seashell Island, which is a hunk of raised reef a stone's throw from the beach.

Jade, a bit tentative at first, gathered dozens of shells. I'm not sure where we'll store these on Dafne and won't be surprised if I find them in my closet, or worse.

The shallows in this bay are a favorite of kite surfers. They love to jump the spit of sand where we tried to snorkel. 

Stella was in heaven. She loves stuff like this: exploring new places, challenging herself. She ran ahead and tried wading out to a further rock, but retreated when a small shark crossed her path. 

Lunch happened at a roadside BBQ joint serving "rice and peas" and various grilled meats. The girls had never had "rice and peas" before, and were, of course, amusingly surprised when rice and beans arrive. The ribs were great (no surprise), but Jade's chicken ruled (surprise). Afterwards they let Stella take a turn in the "kitchen."

After a quick stop at Le Grand Marche in Philipsburg—ok, not quick; nothing ever is on Sint Maarten—we arrived at Buccaneer Beach, a thin strip of clean sand wrapping Simpson Bay, so called by the beach bar that serves $2 beers to all the cruisers and hosts movie night on the beach on Fridays. This was Stella's choice; and our first cruising friends, Jane and Erwin and their daughters Sofia and Isabelle, joined us. After a few hours of snorkeling, epic turns of Marco Polo, and jumping off the pier—most of which I napped through (life is tough)—we retreated to burgers and salads at the Buccaneer Bar.

And, of course, our double chocolate cake from Le Grand Marche. A perfect end to a perfect day in the islands. Happy birthday Stella.

Lunging Forward

Dreams move in fits and starts. Ours just lunged forward. After an 8-month search that put several thousand miles of Interstate 95 under the tires of our poor old Kia, and countless conversations about the right boat—boring the kids to tears on several occasions ("Daddy, let's just buy a boat and stop talking about it")—we finally signed a contract on a boat.

Our choice is a used Leopard 40. She was built in 2008 and has spent the first part of her life working as a charter boat in the Moorings fleet in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Although "working in the BVI" sure sounds idyllic to us professional saps living in dreary East Coast cities, a boat like this gets a hell of lot of wear in charter. Many people advise against buying a boat out of charter for just this reason, saying that you'll end up putting as much into the vessel in the form of repairs and equipment as you'd pay for a privately owned, boat. Maybe so. But, we think we escaped this fate.

Lani and I spent five days in the Caribbean, between Tortola and St. Martin, and looked at over 20 boats. At the Moorings, which is the largest charter company in the world with hundreds of boats at its base in Tortola, we looked at 15 in a row. It was a busy, fun day; but, pretty soon every Leopard 40 starts to look the same.

This is the layout of the boat. There are four cabins, two in each hull, along with a bathroom (head, in nautical parlance) in each hull, and a large living area elevated in between called the saloon.

One of our biggest criterion was having a large cockpit so that the kids would have a lot of space for hanging out, doing projects, and so forth. I think we can fit all five of us around this table, especially if we add some chairs.

Powder Days, as the boat is called, has a few more weeks in charter. In a couple of weeks we'll have a survey done, which will generate a lengthy to-do list for the charter company. In the last week of April she'll stop renting out and begin a month-long phase out, in which she gets everything fixed and cleaned up and ready for us.

In June we push off.