Because the Gaillard Cut is still too narrow in places for two big ships to pass each other, only �uplocking� takes place during the morning hours at all the locks. Each lock is 1000 feet long and 110 feet wide. The schedule is coordinated so that those with the largest beams pass each other in Gatun Lake and not in the Cut. Small vessels, like our sailboat, are only allowed by the PCA to transit during the daylight hours. The day we transited, one of the first big ships during daylight hours that didn�t fill the entire lock was the Wani Falcon, the ship we shared the lock with when uplocking. It was also the last big ship of the morning traffic to transit the canal.
During the day our advisor had been required to call PCA Traffic Control and mention our progress at specific channel markers. When he called in around 4 p.m., he was told that the Wani Falcon had already arrived at the Gatun Locks and was scheduled to go into the locks at 4:45 p.m. Because it was the last big ship that day to be �downlocking� during daylight hours, we either had to make it to the Gatun Locks by that time or else spend the night on Gatun Lake and exit the next afternoon. We had been maintaining a boat speed of 5.5 knots throughout the entire transit. At this time we increased our boat speed to 6.2 knots. As we came out of the Banana Cut Channel, we could see the Wani Falcon and the tug off in the distance and to the side of the Gatun Locks. We ended up making the locks just in time and entered the chamber immediately.
As we were now �downlocking�, we entered ahead of the ship. Since the tug was not going to accompany the ship into the locks, we had to transit center chamber, our second transit choice. Ray and John handled the two bow lines; Eileen and Mary handled the two stern lines. There were 4 PCA line handlers along the walls of the chamber assigned to our boat. Each threw a heaving line with a monkey fist weight attached across the boom of our sailboat. We then attached the loop at the end of our transit lines to their heaving lines and they pulled in our lines fitting our end loops over the bollards. Afterwards, we took in the slack until Kuhela was centered in the chamber. Once the ship had entered and the water in the chamber began to drain, the four of us let out our lines slowly. When finally the �bathtub was drained� and the water was equalized with that in the following chamber, the PCA line handlers (now high up on the chamber wall) undid our transit lines from the bollards. We then pulled in quickly our lines with their heaving lines still attached, and as Kuhela moved slowly forward to the next chamber the PCA line handlers walked forward alongside our boat holding their heaving lines as we held their other end attached to our transit lines. In all, there were three chambers in the Gatun Locks, and we went down a total of 85 feet before reaching sea level. |
