Leg 3 Panama Canal

Transiting the Panama Canal has been an amazing experience and pictures can never convey the huge scale of the project conceived and built almost 100 years ago. We made a recce trip to watch some big cargo ships in the locks

The ships are built with the canal in mind and there is hardly more than a metre on each side of the ships as they go through. They are held in place in the locks by the 'Mules' which are small railway engines with wire hawsers to hold the ship

Then it was our turn. We started well before dawn and entered the first set of locks in the dark.We were 'rafted' in groups of two or three, and had to control our position in the locks with our own lines

As we reached the top of the third lock and entered the Gatun lake dawn was rising, the rafts were broken up and we sailed (or motored) on through the most beautiful countryside

The canal was still open to the big ships and we were passing huge monsters coming the other way.

And dwarfed our little boats.

We had to wait between two of the locks and this gave us a chance to see other ships coming down

Here Gipsy Moth IV can be seen with the next lock occupant waiting behind

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