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More details later but we had a marvelous transit through the Panama Canal and we are now moored at the Balboa Yacht Club, Panama City. 

In the middle of Tuesday morning, Randall received the news that we were to go a day earlier than expected.  I was stocking up at the grocery store all morning oblivious of the change until I got back to the boat at noon.  By 3 pm we pulled out of Shelter Bay Marina with ourselves, Connie and Steve from Better Days (who could luckily adjust to the new schedule and who brought lots of wonderful food), and two young men from France, Olivier and Frank-Olivier, who by chance were at the Marina looking for an opportunity to be line-handlers. (Volkmer the Austrian with whom we had originally made arrangements was not able to get to us in time.)

We picked up our first Advisor, Francisco, around 5:30pm and went up through the three Gatun Locks around 8 pm, in the dark (there are huge floodlights) and in some heavy rain showers.  We were behind a huge container ship that had only 6 inches of room on either side and created a very turbulent wake when it pulled forward but we were held by our four robust lines in the middle of the lock without having to tie up to any other boats.  Around 9:30 pm, Francisco helped us tie up with another sailboat to a huge mooring in the lake before he was picked up to go home for the night.

At 6:30 am on Wednesday our new Advisor, Elvir (or Mac), arrived and we set off across Gatun Lake enjoying the sunny weather and even using the jib to assist the motor some of the time.  We descended through the Pedro Migel Lock around noon and the two Miraflores locks about an hour later.  Elvir left us as we passed under the Bridge of the Americas and our wonderful agent, Victor, had managed to get us a mooring at the Balboa Yacht Club where he joined us for lunch and a celebration to have made it through safely.

Everything went very smoothly and we had great fun with our American and French crew.  The two advisors were very professional, helpful, and interesting, so it was a pleasure to have them aboard.  Overall it was a much easier and more enjoyable experience than we had imagined and we are very excited to be on the “Pacific side”.