Day 2 of the Canal Transit

OK, I lied, this isn’t day 2. Here we are at the main vegetable market in Panama City at the Pineapple vendor grabbing supplies for the next month.
  Advisor Roy with a car carrier_or ro/ro for roll on roll off_ going under the Bridge of the Americas.
The crew and lead photographers lining up for the first lock. The crew was Greg and Granite from Lion’s Paw (Granite is AKA Deb - the nickname derivation takes some story telling), my brother John and Chris and I.
We side tied to this massive Canal tug, Pacora. It looks like the normal Z-Tech Canal tugs, but this one just came over on its own bottom from China. It is a blown up version of the standard Canal tug designed for the locks when they open in 2014. You can order one for yourself for $12 million. 

Mira Flores locks and our new American flag trying to fly for the crossing.
Heading under the Centennial Bridge during rush hour. You can just see another sailboat heading towards us on the left.
  You can’t transit the Canal without a good pic of the old WWII German crane, The Titan, sitting in the work yard at Gamboa. They used it to move U-boats.

Advisor Roy modeling his second outfit.
Hanging below in Lake Gatun waiting for our next day advisor and the rain to stop.
The rain temporarily stopped and a rainbow hung over a bulk carrier that was anchored in the lake waiting for his down lock.
Chris directing the bulk carrier behind us. We are side tied to a small tour boat, Discovery. They take people through the locks and do kayak tours in Lake Gatun.
The passengers on Discovery took a bunch of pics of us going through the locks. They wanted to get our e-mail to send them to us. Here’s Greg passing boat cards to a crew on the Discovery, and trying to order chips and salsa.
Headed down the last lock, looking out toward the Caribbean. That’s the top of a massive bulk carrier waiting for the step up in the other lane on the right.  We made it into Shelter Bay Marina after dark – tired after along day of waiting to make the final transit and ready for a shower. Thanks to our great advisors and intrepid crew, we had great a transit with minimum drama. What an experience!
Paul and Chris

Made it through the first 3 locks

Thanks to everyone who sent the webcam pics. Here’s Jeorgia in the first lock at Mira Flores. We had good transit through the first 3 locks. Good adviser, good crew, good food, minimum drama. We spent the night in Lake Gatun, opening and closing all the ports as the tropical rain started and stopped. The Canal is having trouble fitting us in among the big ships to lock down to the Caribbean side. We are currently scheduled for around 17:00 to lock down.
You might catch us on the Webcam under the Gatun Locks tab.
Webcam:
http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html
Paul

Canal Live Camera

We’re scheduled to head through the Canal in the morning, Sunday Dec. 4. Here is a link to the live camera feeds. We are currently scheduled for the Mira Flores Locks at about 10:30am. I will try and put an update up here once I get one.
Mira Flores Locks Webcam
You will most likely see a large ship enter the lock, then perhaps a tug enter and then a small dot enter. We will be the small dot.
If you do see us come through, please try and save a picture and e-mail it to us: svjeorgia@gmail.com
To get a picture, bring up the image in a browser, then use the control-Print-Screen to capture the image. To save it, open an image processing app like Paint, create a new image and Paste the image in, and Save to a file.
Paul