BlueJacket transits Panama Canal on Wednesday

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

008-56.400 N
079-33.530 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

Tomorrow will be a big day for BlueJacket as we'll be transiting the Panama canal. The current schedule has us going through the Miraflores (Pacific side) locks starting at 09:46 EDT or 08:46 CDT. You can watch BlueJacket via Panama Canal webcam at http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html?cam=MirafloresHi. Note that you may have to select one of the alternate views to find one that works.

The Panama canal consists of 6 locks with 3 on each side. Coming from the Pacific side we'll first go through the double Miraflores lock which will raise us about 55', motor a short distance and then go through the Pedro Miguel lock which will raise us about 29' for a total of 84'. We'll then motor about 28 miles across Gatun lake and then we'll drop down 84 feet through the triple Gatun lock. According to the schedule we'll exit the canal at around 5 PM on the Atlantic side. However, very few boats actually make it through in 1 day, so we're well provisioned to feed our crew of 5-6 people. We'll have 3 additional line handlers on board as well as an "advisor".

We've spent days getting the boat ready to do this transit and we seem to be right on schedule to have everything done.

I will attempt to send out mail when we actually begin our transit, but I may be a bit busy driving the boat

Wish us luck and hope that we make it through in 1 day!

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 2240