By Dylan – 19 April 2021

I woke up this morning feeling very tired. The night before was a very long night as we were catching up with our friends that we have not seen in a year and a half, so we were up until the early hours of the morning.

I am very excited as today is the day we pass through the amazing Panama Canal. We had been waiting to do this for months now and this is supposed to be one of the most amazing parts of the whole trip. So I’m so excited to get going! On the contrary, I’m also a bit sad as we will be leaving the Caribbean for quite some time now and won’t see it any time soon. On top of that, our friends that we just reunited with we will be leaving them again for a couple weeks as they still need to prepare which is sad.

My friend Gerrard crossed a week before us and told us that it was awesome and we were excited to see them and chat to them on the other side.

At eight in the morning we left the boat all ready to go and have as much fun and time together with our friends as possible. We met at the minimart and walked around together talking about all the different adventures we have had while we were not together. We also went to the abandoned church for the last time, and we had ice cream! As time came to mid day, we said our goodbyes, and we left with our line handlers to the anchorage – where we would then wait for the pilot boat to come drop off an adviser, which will tell us where to go and what to do while we are crossing to the Gatineau lake, where we will wait the night and get a new pilot to help us with the locks leading down to the Pacific Ocean.

After about two hours of waiting our pilot turns up a little late so we put on the engines really fast to catch up to the tanker that we were transiting with. So at a fast 8 knots we soon arrive. We wait outside the locks for it to be our turn to enter and we tie up next to a tug boat. It was an amazing sight seeing these big gates close behind the boat and we soon started rising. My brother and I were watching from the back steps, and we were amazed by how much current passes through the locks. About ten minutes later we stoped rising and the front gates opened. The cargo ship in front of us put his engines on when he did not need to and created a huge current. Luckily we were still tied onto the tug so we were ok. A minute later the tanker stopped and we untied and moved backwards and let the tug boat go ahead of us. He put his engines on too strong and the current pushed us around and back towards the gate we almost crashed into the wall and the back, but we managed to spin ourselves around and we moved on to the next lock.

We tied onto the tug boat and our adviser went to go tell the captain of the tug boat to slow down and not to do that again. Soon the lock passed and the cargo ship did not put on his engines this time. He passed out to the Gatun lake and we moved in front of the tug boat and we were in Gatun lake – we had made it. We left all super happy and excited and our advisor told us where to go to get to one of the ships mourning balls so we went and tied up. Soon the pilot boat came around and we gave our pilot some beers as a gift and he left. We celebrated! We had finally made it we were half way there and we soon had dinner, we were all very tired so we went to sleep to get some energy to do the next half tomorrow.

We woke up the next morning and got the boat ready for what was ahead while we waited for an advisor to come. An hour later the advisor came. I jumped on the morning and untied the lines and jumped on the boat. We drove to the main Channel, where we saw the tanker that we would go with if we managed to catch up with it. If not there was one behind us that will be there. We motored a couple hours with the amazing jungle scenery, when I looked out and there was a small beach and on it a croc. Wow it was amazing it was the first time I had ever seen a crocodile. We watched it for a while, however we could not slow down as we needed to get there in time.

The gates were in sight. This time we would not be crossing with a tug we will be crossing on our own. They threw these heavy balls of rope on the boat that we then tied our lines onto, they then pulled the ropes up and we got in position. We had some lunch as we waited for a tanker to come in behind us. We finished lunch just in time and they closed the gates and we started going down with the water. We then bring in the lines and head to the next locks.

There was a small lake that we passed over and then we headed in the next set of locks and as we were in the lock we saw it. Finally it was in sight the Pacific Ocean. We passed the lock and moved onto the next. We were soon lowered and the gates in front of us opened. The gateway to the pacific. We drove out – we had made it!

We tie onto a mooring and our line handlers left and so did our advisor, we thanked them both and off they went.

Wow, here we were. Our friend Gerrard was there waving to us and congratulating us. We made it! We had dinner and after a long dinner we went to bed. We are finally in pacific waters.