Colon ... entry to the Panama Canal

Having spent a few days in Portobello it was again time to move on. It was a pleasant four hour downwind sail to Colon. The entry to the harbour is very easy and we anchored off Club Nautico. What a shock to the senses. Visually ... we were surrounded by wrecks on the shore and old boats tied off to the wharves. Smell... the aroma of rubbish burning on the far side of the harbour and a disused bunker boat that was giving of strong fumes from the left over fuels inside. Noise ... the rumble of engines from all the ships that are in the port or on their way in or out. Balance ... waves caused by the wind are fine, but then you get rolled around by the wakes of all the service boats running up and down the port. Well after quiet islands surrounded by nature, what a mess.
Going ashore is no better as the area is very unsafe. You need to take a taxi to anywhere that you want to go to. There is also nowhere really to go ashore, however Club Nautico does allow you to tie up to their dinghy dock for US$5 a day. It's not the best of places and must be the most run down Club Nautico that we have come across; at least there are security guards there so the dinghy is fairly safe. The taxi's often come past the gate and are, at least, very cheap. The security guards are all armed to the teeth and the police look like they are ready to go to war. You have two police on a motorbike with the back cop carrying an Uzi submachine gun at the ready. Any decent looking houses are barricaded like we have never seen before and sadly there are few of these homes as most of the lovely old building in town have either collapse from lack of maintenance and repair or are about to fall apart. The city is filthy and it is sad to see the poverty and the squalor that a lot of the people live in.
We organised with Tito who is an agent for getting through Panama and the Canal. He has been very good and yesterday we did all the initial paperwork. Today we had our boat measured at the flats which is on the other side of Colon. We motored around yesterday and spent the night. We rolled around a lot due to all the traffic in the port and the channel leading up to the locks. After the measuring process...lots of forms, we returned to the old anchorage and then had to go to the bank and pay our US$1500 for our transit through the Panama Canal ($800 is refunded should you transit the canal without any delays). We still have to pay Tito, line handlers ($75 each X three), for the hiring of ten tyre fenders and four 38m ropes....that adds up to around $400. This is an extremely costly exercise. These are just the canal costs and do not take into account your cruising permit for Panama and other immigration and customs fees. Tonight we hear from the canal control when we can expect to get through which we reckon could be in 4-5days.
Three boats go through together rafted together. We spend the night up in the lake and then come down the other side the next day. There are cameras at all the locks and if you google Panama canal live cams you should easily find the site. We will try and post our time that we are due to enter the lock here and you can see us going through. Oh what fun... till then

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